This National Bureau of Economic Research working paper sets foundational competitiveness as the expected level of output per working-age individual that is supported by the overall quality of a country as a place to do business. The focus on output per potential worker, a broader measure of national productivity than output per current worker, reflects the dual role of workforce participation and output per worker in determining a nation's standard of living.

The new microeconomics of competition is contained in frameworks that structure the complexity of competition and inform managers of choices that they must make. The role of location has shifted from factor endowments and size to productivity growth; factor inputs are abundant and accessed via globalization. To increase productivity, factor inputs must improve in efficiency, quality, and ultimately specialization in particular cluster areas, which are critical masses of companies in a particular location.

This 2007 report by the Council on Competitiveness benchmarks current U.S. competitiveness against twenty years of domestic and global economic data. The baseline year of 1986 was chosen because it marked the beginning of cyclical expansion in the domestic economy, a high dollar, and an exploding trade deficit, which put the concept of competitiveness on the national agenda. It also marked the creation of the Council on Competitiveness. The report is a wide-ranging assessment of how the changing global economy presents new challenges for the future.

Hosted by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the 2008 National Summit on American Competitiveness held in Washington, DC on September 18, 2007 gathered the nation's premier leaders in business, government, and academia to address steps that the public and private sectors should take to help secure America's competitive position in the global economy. Core components and lessons included education and workforce issues, energy independence, and partnerships in innovation. Participants included former U.S.

This commentary from the Journal of International Business Studies documents highlights from an interview with Professor Michael Porter in 2006 on his research and ideas relating to the microeconomic foundations of global competitiveness, lending a microeconomic perspective on some of the key areas of his recent research in business strategy, industrial economics, competitiveness, clusters, U.S. economic leadership, and economic growth and development.

As this report from the NADO Research Foundation illustrates, over the last 30 years South Carolina has developed a flourishing, globally competitive automotive and ground transportation cluster that has become a major engine of economic growth in the state.

This 2012 report from the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and PlanSmart NJ details how appropriate infrastructure and investment play a critical role in the economic development and prosperity of regional innovation clusters. Recognizing the importance of cluster-based targeted economic growth, an advisory committee of state-wide leaders and experts shared its insight on the economic challenges and opportunities in New Jersey to inform this collaborative project and ground it in real world experience. 

A new framing of competitiveness has clarified the role of regions in economic policy. Its empirical findings align well with existing literature on the drivers of regional economic performance, but there are opportunities for mutual learning. A step-change in the availability of data on clusters and cluster policies has enabled new research approaches, yet current cluster policies have been largely focused on strengthening existing agglomerations rather than creating new ones.

Economic geography during an era of global competition involves a paradox. It is widely recognized that changes in technology and competition have diminished many of the traditional roles of location. Yet clusters, or geographic concentrations of interconnected companies, are a striking feature of virtually every national, regional, state, and even metropolitan economy, especially in more advanced nations. The prevalence of clusters reveals important insights about the microeconomics of competition and the role of location in competitive advantage.

Over the last decades, changes in the global economy and the emergence of Global Value Chains (GVCs) have raised interest in understanding the specific conditions and cross-company interactions within and across locations. For companies, the need to choose the right location for specific activities has moved from an operational to a strategic issue. For countries, regions and cities, competition raised the stakes of understanding how to improve productivity and attract firms in specific fields beyond providing low factor costs and subsidies. Many countries, from natural-resource-rich to transition economies and developed countries have launched competitiveness policies and cluster initiatives involving various stakeholders. This paper addresses how clusters can be leveraged for economic policy and what the role of different stakeholders in this process is. It summarises the cluster concept, focusing on the main theoretical framework and on recent empirical findings, and discusses key pillars of a cluster-based economic policy approach. The paper concludes with an application of the concept to resource-rich, oil-dependent economies.