Wharton School Helps Release Extensive Country Rankings

The Wharton School has helped to produce a new set of country rankings in which one can find a quite astonishing number of different categories.

The inaugural Best Countries report stems from surveying perceptions of a country’s attributes among 16,000 people across four regions of the world, of which roughly a quarter were business decision makers. David Reibstein, a Wharton School marketing professor was one of the people who then turned that data into a scoring system and its subsequent country rankings.

“Our results were analyzed in correlation with the per capita gross domestic purchasing power parity of each country,” said the Wharton School professor, explaining how the model used to form the country rankings also extended to the IMF’s measure of inclusive prosperity.

Germany came out in 1st place overall, but there are a number of country ranking categories within the whole that might be of particular interest to business school graduates and indeed, hopefuls:

Country rankings for entrepreneurship and starting a new business

With interest in entrepreneurship sky high among current business school students, it’s interesting to note that Germany – the overall country ranking winner – also placed highest in a separate entrepreneurship category, ahead of Japan (which has been working on addressing risk aversion) and the US. There’s particular reference to Berlin, the startup culture of which you can read more about here, and business school, ESMT, gets a nod for making resources and knowledge tailored to budding startup founders a key part of its programs. MBA applicants around the world are interested in studying in Germany more than anywhere else in Europe, bar the UK, by QS’s latest count.  

However, Germany isn’t the best place to start a new business, according to a separate compilation list of attributes deemed most worthy in this respect. That’s Thailand, 1st among a crop of countries in Asia where setup costs are relatively low and procedures less mangled by reams of red tape. However, that Thailand is the top choice here, ahead of Malaysia and the Philippines, also relates to respondents’ opinions on countries’ affordability, manufacturing costs and access to capital as well as on how well connected they regard it as being to the rest of the world.

Country rankings for corporate headquarters and ‘business friendly’ locations

However, if you want somewhere to which you can move a corporation’s headquarters, or indeed to establish new headquarters, then you want an altogether different type of country. You want favorable tax conditions, economic stability and a safe and educated environment in which to live and work, with well-developed infrastructure, according to this country ranking category. You want Canada. The North American nation placed ahead of Australia and Sweden as the most attractive location for a corporation’s headquarters.

But an attractive location for corporation headquarters isn’t quite the same thing as generally being seen by people as ‘business friendly’. If you make that the emphasis, then Luxembourg comes out in 1st place by some distance (although Canada does still place 3rd with Sweden 2nd). Luxembourg’s victory here, as you might expect, rests largely on perceptions that it’s a relative tax haven for corporations, at least for the time being. However, it’s also to do with views on government transparency and levels of corruption.

Country ranking model extended to 2020 to name world’s 'movers'

If, instead, you’re an MBA looking to catch the next wave of emerging markets, you won’t find many of the names too surprising at the top of the ‘movers’ country ranking, but you might raise an eyebrow at the order in which they appear. India was singled out as the country to most keep an eye on between now and 2020 (it also placed first for its investment potential, incidentally). China had to settle for 3rd in this analysis, behind Singapore, in a top five comprised solely of countries in Asia. Latin America’s top entry, Brazil, came in 6th, with Peru placing 17th as the region’s next best in the perception stakes. Africa and the Middle East, meanwhile, saw a trio of quite distinct representatives, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and South Africa nestled together between 7th and 9th, with Russia placing 10th. The ‘movers’ analysis was based on predicted growth between 2014 and 2020 to the data model co-developed by the Wharton School’s David Reibstein.

The country rankings, produced jointly between Wharton, U.S. News & World Report, and brand strategy firm, WPP’s BAV Consulting, considered 60 countries all in all and placed them into a total of 24 rankings lists.