Elite Quality Report 2024: The Sustainable Value Creation of Nations

Abstract

The Elite Quality Index for 2024 (EQx2024) is the fifth annual publication of the internationally comparative ranking of countries on ‘elite quality’. It provides 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 EQx2024 uses 146 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 top 10 countries in the EQx2024 are:

Country & Rank (Trend) Score
Singapore 1 (+1) 65.3
Switzerland 2 (-1) 64.8
Netherlands 3 (+3) 64.5
Japan 4 (0) 64.4
New Zealand 5 (-2) 64.0
Korea, Rep. 6 ((13) 63.7
Israel 7 -(2) 63.6
Germany 8 (0) 63.4
Sweden 9 (1) 62.7
Denmark 10 (1) 62.5

The 320-page report provides a sub-index on 'power' of elites, both economic and political, as well as many other unique and aggregate measures like 'creative destruction'.

The EQx2024 is an edited work that includes nearly 30 contribution from authors from around the world who interpret the results. Their analyses cover countries (such as the US, China, Japan, India, Singapore or Indonesia), as well as specific value creation/extraction phenomena reflecting elite business models (such as inflation, drug addiction, railways, SDGs, or crony capitalism). Like previous reports, the EQx2024 aims to move policymakers to implement structural reforms for sustainable value creation, and to stimulate non-elite support for inclusive elite business models as they compete in intra-elite contests.

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