The Assessment of Impact of Competitiveness to Economic Development

Competition plays key driving force for economic development in the efficient market economy. To achieve competitive advantage at the international level, each country needs to improve competitiveness on different economic indicators at the national level. The Global Competitiveness Report 2018 of World Economic Forum calculated the competitiveness index of countries under 98 sub-indexes. The goal of the research is econometric assessment of the impact of competitiveness to economic development in the oil rich countries, such as Azerbaijan. For the purposes of this research, the global rating of Azerbaijan was determined through calculating the volume of GDP, as well as, oil and non-oil GDP. The research was conducted by applying systematic and statistical analysis and running Excell and Eviews8 calculations. As a result, the impact of competitiveness index to the GDP (oil and non-oil GDP) at the oil rich countries, such as Azerbaijan was calculated and following outcomes were achieved: The semi-elasticity coefficient is above 1 on the volume of non-oil GDP on the competitiveness index. That means, if the competitiveness of Azerbaijan increases on the global rating then the next year non-oil GDP increases more than 1%. The improvement of the competitiveness indicators in the current year in Azerbaijan increases non-oil sector the following year. It takes time to attract investments to a country, so this outcome is expected. The semi-elasticity coefficient of the GDP volume on the competitiveness index is smaller than the semi-elasticity coefficient of the non-oil GDP at the oil rich countries. The practical importance of the research: this study can motivate other scholars to conduct reseach on the area. The innovativeness and uniqueness of the research: the impact of the competitiveness indicators on the economic growth has been assesed in Azerbaijan.