The United States ranks No. 1 for global economic competitiveness in Swiss business school IMD's list of 60 countries.
The resilience of the U.S. economy, improving employment numbers and dominance in technology and infrastructure helped the United States remain at the top of the ratings.
"The overall competitiveness story for 2014 is one of continued success in the U.S., partial recovery in Europe and struggles for some large emerging markets," Arturo Bris, director of the
IMD World Competitiveness Center, said in a statement.
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"There is no single recipe for a country to climb the competitiveness rankings, and much depends on the local context."
The United States was followed in the rankings by Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong, which all benefited from exports, business efficiency and innovation.
Then came Sweden, Germany, Canada and the United Arab Emirates.
Emerging markets fell in the rankings amid slowing economic growth and foreign investment and inadequate infrastructure. China ranked 23rd, India 44th and Brazil 54th.
China suffered from concerns about its business environment, while India and Brazil were hurt by inefficient labor markets and ineffective business management.
A recent World Bank study estimated that China's economy will surpass the U.S. economy in size later this year, when measuring by price-adjusted exchange rates.
But Harvard economist Jeffrey Frankel takes issue with that measurement, because the World Bank data compares countries' GDP using purchasing-power-parity exchange rates, instead of market rates.
"This is the right thing to do when looking at inflation-adjusted income per capita in order to measure people's living standards," he wrote in an article for
Project Syndicate. "But it is the wrong thing to do when looking at national income in order to measure the country's weight in the global economy."
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