IMPACT OF ECONOMIC SENTIMENT ON WEF'S ASSESSING NATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS IN THE PRE-CRISIS AND POST-CRISIS PERIOD

The competitiveness rankings are a widely used method of international comparison among countries. The changes in these rankings can not only serve as a reflection of a country's economic performance but can also indicate improvement (or deterioration) in key assumptions for the country's future success in global competition. Reliability of this prediction depends on the quality of the model applied for the international comparison. Global competitiveness rankings differ in the representation of hard and soft data and in the importance (weight) attributed to both types of data during the calculation of the composite indicator (CI). The sensitivity of the final CI on the quality and the explanatory power of soft data depends on the representation of this type of data in the collection of variables and the statistical relevance of the opinion survey. The 2012 audit of the WEF's Executive Opinion Survey (EOS) addressed an important aspect related to the impact of national culture - the so-called cultural bias - which may have been influencing interviewee responses. Due to this cultural bias (different economic sentiment among countries), the informational value of soft data could be considered problematic. The aim of this paper is (1) to identify advantages and disadvantages of soft data, (2) to find reasons for the rather negative sentiment in the new EU member states, and (3) to compare the economic sentiment in the pre -crisis and post -crisis period. To achieve these aims, the countries' results in the selected WEF pillars (i.e. pillars based solely on soft data) were analysed.