Sweden, despite a rather stable competitiveness
profile across all areas, falls four places this year to
round up the top 10 rankings. Overall the country boasts
important strengths across the board, with strong
institutions (13th) that are regarded as transparent and
efficient, excellent infrastructure (22nd), and healthy
macroeconomic conditions (17th) that include low levels of fiscal deficit and public debt, allowing the country to
maintain its triple-A rating throughout the recent financial
and economic crisis. Moreover, and perhaps more
importantly, Sweden has managed to create the right
set of conditions for innovation and unsurprisingly scores
very high in many of the dimensions that are key to
creating a knowledge-based society. More precisely, the
Swedish education and training system (14th) is of high
quality and seems to deliver the right set of skills for an
innovation-based economy; ICT adoption (3rd) is among
the highest in the world; and, in terms of innovation
capacity (6th), firms are among the best performing. In
addition, the country has also formed highly competitive
markets (21st), which produce the right set of incentives
to quickly transform those knowledge assets into new
products and services with higher value-added. Going
forward, the country should address its labor market
regulations (59th) and the potential distortions that a
high tax rate system (119th) may create, as these two
elements are considered the two most problematic
factors for doing business in the country.