Rethinking Competitiveness and Human Development in Global Comparative Researches.

Methodologically this research is based on the approach of many social scientists who argue that there is a bidirectional link: one runs from economic growth (EG) to human development (HD), as the resources from national income are allocated to activities contributing to HD; the other runs from HD to EG, when human capital helps increase national income. The background of this study is based also on the previous empirical researches of the authors, where they found statistically significant tendency of a middle strong negative correlation (r=-0.615, p=0.000) between the achieved competitiveness level of a country and its growth capacity – so-called “developed” countries have lower growth capacity. This tendency made the authors think of the HD trends. What if countries with higher indicators of HD also have lower growth capacity in the development of their people? And how are GC and HD trends interconnected? So, the purpose of this study is to take a fresh look at HD in global comparative researches, taking into consideration the abovementioned previous findings in global competitiveness trends. Correlation analysis of HDI 2006 and average annual change of HDI 2006-2012 showed that similarly with GCI growth trends countries with higher HD level also have lower growth capacity in this indicator (r=-0.573, p=0.000). The authors also found out that global growth trends of GCI and HDI are interconnected with statistically significant positive correlation (r=+0.364, p=0.000). The authors conclude that globally more developed countries are currently losing not only their GC, but also HD capacity, and both these trends are statistically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]