Course on Competitiveness, Growth and Crises

The JVI recently hosted a week-long course on “Competitiveness, Growth and Crises”. Led by the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, this course stood out for its timeliness and relevance. In a time of poly-crises, governments worldwide are reconsidering their drivers of long-term competitiveness to ensure sustained economic growth.

The course presents theoretical concepts in a digestible yet rigorous fashion. It equips participants with the analytical tools to examine the competitiveness of their economies, looking at issues such as productivity, structural change, and innovation. Finally, it encourages discussions around the bottlenecks and concrete policy solutions to foster competitiveness and growth, amid the uncertainties of the current times.

These issues are highly topical today. Heightened international competition and trade barriers, races for technological leadership, and other challenges are obliging countries to assess and re-think their engines of competitiveness. What worked only five years ago does not seem to cut it any longer. Which economic sectors drive economic growth in the country and which should be prioritised? Where does a country position itself in global value chains? What is a country’ innovation performance and what can be done to boost it? These are some of the questions governments around the world are asking themselves. These are also the questions we ask in our course. 

To ensure a comprehensive understanding and skill acquisition, the curriculum included a series of workshops and interactive sessions, led by a team of professionals from various organisations. 

Judging from the enthusiastic reactions of the participants, this JVI course contributed to capacity building in analysing competitiveness and designing policy solutions to sustain, or revamp, it.

Francesca Guadagno, Economist, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies