Scotland’s Economic Performance - Analysis of OCED Rankings over Time

The research looked at a number of different indicators over a 10- year period: Productivity, Employment, Exports, Business Capital Investment, GERD and BERD and considered the changing in quartile rankings across each for Scotland and other OECD nations.

The methodology consisted of desk research.

Across most economic indicators, and for most countries including Scotland, there is very little change in the economic performance quartile or rank over the last 10 years. For many countries where there are improvements or worsening in rank, this does not usually result in changes in quartile. Furthermore, once a country reaches the top quartile for an indicator, it tends to remain there. There are some countries that score consistently highly across the various economic indicators for which we have longer term data. These tend to be the Scandinavian countries. Similarly, there are countries that are consistently improving their ranking. These include a number of Eastern European/ EU succession countries, with the ‘opening up’ economically of these countries driving growth. The long-term trend analysis suggests that it may take a long time for economic policy changes to convert to tangible improvements in relative economic performance.

Potential future research would be to explore how and why countries maintain top quartile economic performance, and any lessons for Scotland.