The Brexitologic of Competitiveness

Abstract

Abstract Adam Smith finalised his magnum opus An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations between 1773 (Boston Tea Party) and 1776 (Declaration of Independence), and in its final paragraph Britain should “endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances”. The Wealth of Nations was “aimed to influence British MPs [Members of Parliament] to support a peaceful resolution to the American colonies’ War of Independence”, A. Smith “urged legislators to awaken from the “golden dream” of empire and avoid “a long, expensive and ruinous war”“, and “rejection of the protectionist Corn Laws in favour of opening up to the world economy marked the start of an era of globalization which contributed to Britain’s prosperity”, as Yueh (2019, p. 16f) puts it. Over the years, industrialization brought about by the Industrial Revolution has been challenged by deindustrialization, globalization by deglobalization. So with the “Brexit issue” at stake, what has been the “Brexitologic of Competitiveness”? In an earlier relevant series of analyses published by Čiderová et al. between 2012-2014 our focus was on the Global Competitiveness Index (alias the GCI by the World Economic Forum) in a spectrum of territorial and temporal perspectives related to the European Union. Now, in this follow-up comparative study zooming out to globalization and zooming in to competitiveness, our focus is streamlined to the “openended Brexit issue” on the background of updates of the GCI (alias GCI 4.0) and the KOF Globalisation Index (the latter by ETH Zürich).