Elite Quality Report 2023: Country Scores and Global Rankings

Abstract

The Elite Quality Index for 2023 (EQx2023) measures 'The Sustainable Value Creation of Nations' and is the fourth annual publication of the internationally comparative ranking of countries.

The index 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 EQx2023 uses 134 indicators to establish the EQx Country Scores and Global Rankings for 151 countries and its dataset has 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 EQx2023, which follows in the steps of the pilot EQx2020 and the EQx2021 and EQx2022, is an edited work that includes 26 contributions from 35 authors from around the world. Their analyses cover a diversity of countries (such as the US, China, Japan, Bangladesh, Nigeria or Switzerland) 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, ecology or crony capitalism). The EQx2023 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: sustainable value creation, global index, elites, elite quality, institutions, value extraction, economic development, rent seeking, crony capitalism, political economy, international business

JEL Classification: D72, F50, P16, P48