The 2013 Economic Competitiveness of Estonia: Financials Returns, Labor Productivity and International Gaps

The goal of this report is first to assist managers in gauging the competitive performance of Estonia at the global level. With the globalization of markets, greater foreign competition, and the reduction of entry barriers, it becomes all the more important to benchmark Estonia against other countries on a worldwide basis. Doing so, however, is not an obvious task. First, one needs to aggregate across firms in Estonia. Second, one needs to control for exchange rate volatility. Finally, one needs use comparable financial standards. This report generates international benchmarks and measures gaps that might be revealed from such an exercise. First, data is collected from over 26,000 companies across all regions of the world. For each of these firms, data are standardized into comparable categories (assets, liabilities, income and ratios), by country, region and on a worldwide basis. From there, we eliminate all currency effects by standardizing within each category. Though we heavily rely on historical performance, the figures reported are not historical but are forecasts and projections for the coming fiscal year.