Enhanced measurement and analysis of competitiveness in Europe While competitiveness is at the heart of EU-level policymaking, there is no common definition of the concept and tools for data sources and their analysis are outdated. To resolve this, EU-funded researchers investigated competitiveness indicators and the potential development of new ones to improve the measurement of competitiveness in European countries. Industrial Technologies © Thinkstock With firms increasingly turning to parameters related to competitiveness, improvements in this field can be leveraged for structural resolution of past as well as future financial crises. Against this background, the project MAPCOMPETE (Mapping European competitiveness) worked to connect different approaches to related research and policymaking at the macro, sectoral and micro levels. Spearheaded by six universities and research centres across Europe (Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary and Italy), the end goal was to map data availability and needs to produce a definition of new country-level competitiveness indicators. Over 140 identified indicators were fed into a database following a review of recent advances in policy-oriented theoretical and empirical economic research and the mapping of data availability. The team matched data sets within and across EU Member States to highlight problems in linking the existing data. They identified gaps in available data sets and key data requirements for forming better competitiveness indicators at different levels. The work has implications for selected topics such as global value chains, trade and performance, and pricing and quality. Two main reports were produced that summarise key findings. One presents evidence retrieved from the pilot indicators of competitiveness, developed by combining existing data sets. The second outlines policy options regarding more effective ways of collecting and using data, with a view to improving the development of existing and new competitiveness indicators. Available on the project website, the MAPCOMPETE Indicators Availability Map allows researchers and stakeholders to assess the availability and computability of indicators of competitiveness within and across countries. Project activities and results have been disseminated through the MAPCOMPETE Webtool, which allows users to search and find information on the most useful indicators of competitiveness for Europe. MAPCOMPETE has created guidelines for researchers involved in measuring competiveness and for policymakers interested in new and improved measures of competitiveness. Project outcomes promise improved quality and availability of existing data, with proposed methods and sources for data collection supporting enhanced comparative analysis of competitiveness in European countries. Keywords Competitiveness, MAPCOMPETE, policymaking, competitiveness indicators, financial crises, data availability
