Competitiveness and sustainable growth analysis of the EU countries with the use of Global Indexes' methodology

The issue of countries' competitiveness and sustainable economic growth is constantly at the centre of interest and represents the frequent object of research in economic theory as well as economic practice. The multi-criterial approach and the assessment methodologies relating to the global competitiveness have been dynamically adjusted over the recent years to reflect the current globalization trends in the world economy. The main objective of this study is to analyse the objectivity and resulting values' deviations of the Global competitiveness Index (GCI) and World Competitiveness Index (WCI) composite indexes that are currently considered to be the world's most respected and to identify the impact of key factors that affect the countries' competitive positions with a focus on Slovakia. The research study is realized within the group of EU (24) countries for the period 2006 – 2016. The partial objective is to summarize the main starting points of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Institute for Management Development (IMD) composing these indices, to identify their common features and different approaches that create differences in the results achieved. Then we analyzed the differences between the resulting rankings and the resulting scores of the GCI and WCI rated countries. In the next part, we focused on analyzing the position of Slovakia using the correlation and multiple regression analysis and identifying the interrelationships between individual pillars and the GCI score in order to determine the impact of key factors that influence the competitive position and sustainable growth of Slovakia and improve or worsen its position. Our results highlighted the economic and statistical context of GCI Slovakia development and the impact of the following key pillars and key factors: pillar P1 (P1: Institutions – Public trust in politicians), pillar P3 (P3: Macroeconomic environment – Government debt) and pillar P11 (P11: Business sophistication – Nature of competitive advantage). All three pillars, identified as crucial to the development of the overall Slovakias' GCI scores, occupy unflattering positions in the comparison of pillar rankings. Therefore, we conclude that it is necessary to clarify the causes of their development and eliminate these identified factors as soon as possible. The results can be seen as beneficial to countries' economic policies in increasing global competitiveness.