Elite Quality Report 2022: Country Scores and Global Rankings

Abstract

The Elite Quality Index for 2022 (EQx2022) is the third annual publication of the internationally comparative ranking of countries on ‘elite quality’. Its aim is to provide a unique dataset for academic research, original insight on the human and economic development trajectories of nations and an applied benchmark for elite transformational leadership. Elites effect institutional change which in turn determines economic and human development. Elite quality is a feature of the meso-level elite system that reflects the aggregate value creation of most elite business models in a political economy. Elites are understood as dominant coalitions operating the highest residual income business models. Elite business models can either create new value or transfer existing value from one group to another group in society. Value creation activities are sustainable and comprise innovation, trade or production. Value extraction activities are unsustainable and include barriers, discrimination or monopolies. The EQx2022 uses 120 indicators to establish the EQx Country Scores and Global Rankings for 151 countries and its dataset has already been used in peer-reviewed research. The EQx and its four-level architecture components (such a power, creation destruction or labor value) are essentially measurements of sustainable value creation that shed new light on specific areas of the political economy. The EQx2022, which follows in the steps of the pilot EQx2020 and the EQx2021, is an edited work that includes 30 contributions from 36 authors from around the world. Their analyses of the difficult year of COVID-19 covers countries (such as the US, China, Japan, Germany or India) and reviews their future prospects from an elite quality framework, as well as specific value creation/extraction phenomena reflecting elite business models (such as inflation, diversity and inclusion or crony capitalism). The EQx2022 aims to move policymakers to implement structural reforms for sustainable value creation, and to stimulate non-elites to support inclusive elite business models in intra-elite contests.

Keywords: Keywords: index, elites, elite quality, institutions, value creation, value extraction, economic development, rent seeking, crony capitalism, political economy, global rankings, international business

JEL Classification: D72, F50, P16, P48