Assessing competitiveness: how firm-level data can help

As policymakers refocus on growth, the ability to take a firm-level view is key to disentangling the various factors at the root of competitiveness,

Publishing date: 16 November 2011
Authors: Gianmarco Ottaviano Carlo Altomonte Giorgio Barba Navaretti Filippo di Mauro

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As policymakers refocus on growth, the ability to take a firm-level view is key to disentangling the various factors at the root of competitiveness, and thus to designing appropriate policies.

• Firm-level data provides critical information for the design of appropriate competitiveness measures that complement traditional macro analysis.

• More work remains to be done assembling firm-level information, but the variance of the distribution of firm characteristics already conveys important information in addition to standard averages.

• New indicators should be developed to translate the distribution of firm characteristics into indicators of competitiveness designed to capture not only average performance but also the heterogeneity of firm performance.

This Policy Contribution builds on ongoing research within EFIGE (www.efige.org), a project to help identify the internal policies needed to improve the external competitiveness of the European Union.

About the authors

Gianmarco Ottaviano

Gianmarco Ottaviano, Professor of International Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, joined Bruegel as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in September 2006. His research is mainly focused on spatial economics, international trade, development and growth, capital movements and multinationals. At Bruegel he coordinates the project European Firms in a Global Economy (EFIGE).

After obtaining a Ph.D. in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain, he held teaching positions in Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland. He is affiliated with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London and is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Economic Geography.
Carlo Altomonte

Carlo Altomonte is Professor of Economics of European Integration at the Social and Political Sciences Department of Bocconi University, and a core faculty member of SDA Bocconi School of Management, where he teaches International Business Environment. He has received the SDA Bocconi Teaching Excellence Award in 2007 and the Bocconi Teaching Innovation Award in 2016. He has been a founder, and the first Director, of the World Bachelor in Business, a unique undergraduate triple degree in Business jointly developed by Bocconi University, the University of Southern California and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

He is currently the Director of the Globalization and Industry Dynamics unit at the Baffi-Carefin centre of research of Bocconi University, a Non Resident Fellow at Bruegel, a EU think tank, and a Senior Researcher at ISPI, the Italian centre of Studies on International Politics. He has been visiting scholar at the Centre of Economic Performance of the London School of Economics and at the Research Department of the European Central Bank. He has been a visiting professor at the Paris School of Economics (Panthèon-Sorbonne, Paris, France) and KU Leuven (Belgium), and has held short teaching courses at the Wagner School of Government (NYU, New York), Keio University (Tokyo), Fudan University and CEIBS (Shanghai) among others.

He has been regularly acting as consultant for a number of national and international institutions, including the Italian Government, the United Nations (UNCTAD), the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Central Bank, analysing the role of international trade and investment and their implication for competitiveness.

His main areas of research and publication are international trade and investment, the political economy of globalization and its implication on competitiveness. He has published in several leading academic journals, among which Journal of Industrial Economics, European Economic Review, Economic Policy, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of International Business Studies, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics.
Giorgio Barba Navaretti

Giorgio Barba Navaretti is Professor of Economics at the University of Milan, and Scientific Director of the Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano. He has a PhD in Economics fromOxford University and a Degree in Economics fromBocconi University.

He has been aconsultant to the World Bank, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development,European Commission, UNICEF and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He isspecialised in international and development economics. He is the coauthor ofMultinationals in the World Economy with Anthony J. Venables (Princeton UniversityPress, 2004; Le multinazionali nell’economia mondiale, Il Mulino, 2006). He writes acolumn for Il Sole 24 Ore.
Filippo di Mauro

A visiting professor at the Business School at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and an external Consultant of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB). He is also Chairman of CompNet, a large research network on competitiveness and productivity among EU Institutions, and co-ordinator of the Productivity Research Network (PRN), a similar initiative based in Singapore and covering the Asia-Pacific region.

His present research interests include:

1) Productivity and resource reallocation using firm level data; and

2) Modelling global linkages and business cycle forecast, including global trade and value chains.

Theme: Digital economy, labour markets, skills and health
Language: English