The World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report is an annual assessment of the factors driving productivity and prosperity in 140 countries.

How are Spain and the Netherlands performing and what are their strongest and weakest pilars that build their competitive economy?

Switzerland

First place in the GCI rankings, for the seventh consecutive year, goes to Switzerland. Its strong performance in all 12 pillars of the index explains its remarkable resilience throughout the crisis and subsequent shocks.

The Netherlands

The Netherlands climbs three places to fifth, regaining its highest-ever position in the index on the back of small improvements across a wide range of indicators. Its strongest scores come in areas including education, infrastructure, institutions, business sophistication and innovation; its weaknesses include inflexibilities in the labor market and continuing doubts about its financial markets. Its score on financial market development is still significantly lower than in 2007, before the global financial crisis and the bursting of the Netherlands’ real estate bubble.

Read the full WEF report on the Netherlands here

Spain

Spain is on place 33. Its strongest scores are in infrastructure, health and primary education, technological readiness and market size. Its weakness is in financial market development and innovation.

Read the full WEF report on Spain here

Global economy

This year’s edition found a correlation between highly competitive countries and those that have either withstood the global economic crisis or made a swift recovery from it. The failure, particularly by emerging markets, to improve competitiveness since the recession suggests future shocks to the global economy could have deep and protracted consequences.

A failure to embrace long-term structural reforms that boost productivity and free up entrepreneurial talent is harming the global economy’s ability to improve living standards, solve persistently high unemployment and generate adequate resilience for future economic downturns, according to The Global Competitiveness Report 2015-2016.