The Global Attractiveness Index research project was launched in 2016 to make available to Italian and international decision-makers an innovative country index that can offer a representative profile of the attractiveness and competitive sustainability of countries and, as a result, provide dependable information to aid in making system-wide choices about growth and optimization of the pro-business environment.


The GAI measures the attractiveness of a country using a range of primarily quantitative indicators that represent the various aspects of a country’s attractiveness, dynamism and sustainability. Specifically, the GAI analyzes attractiveness from a dual perspective:

  • internal—the ability to retain resources already present in the area;
  • external—the ability to attract new resources from the outside.



How does the GAI guarantees data comparison over the years?

A distinctive feature of the Global Attractiveness Index is that it reconstructs its series from past data to reflect in each year’s report the updates issued by the leading international statistical bodies from which the databases are derived.

In fact, for correct comparison of the Index over time, the time series on which the indicator is built must be technically comparable and gathered using the same criteria. In some cases, the same piece of data obtained years later may be subject to re-evaluation, both because of changes in the methodology of data collection, as well as differences between an initial estimated value and the final value

For this reason, every year we reconstruct the index's rankings of the Global Attractiveness Index covering the last seven years. Back-calculation of the Index is an important methodological approach of the Global Attractiveness Index that, on the one hand, makes it possible to take account of the changes connected with updating the time series and, on the other, guarantees the comparison over time of the KPIs and the Positioning Index (PI) for each country, providing a more representative and transparent picture of the progress made by the various economies over time.


Which are the most and least attractive countries in the 2023 GAI?

In first place is, once again, Germany, with a score of 100, followed by the United States (94.7) and the United Kingdom (92.7). The positioning of Italy improves significantly, recording the largest change in the ranking of the country since the creation of the Index.

Despite the positive change in the ranking, Italy is unable to close the gap with the Benchmark countries, which remains significant. In fact, despite recording a score of 66.3, with an improvement of 4.1 points compared to 2022, there is still a gap of 12.6 points with France and 33.7 with Germany. Not only that: Spain, which is in a lower position than Italy, has significantly improved its score (64.6 in 2023 vs 58.7 in 2022), with a gap of only 1.7 points from Italy. Considering the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United States, United Kingdom, United States), Italy is the least attractive country in the group: the average score of the G7 countries is 85.4, with a gap of 19 points compared to the Italian score. More specifically, with reference to the 4 macro areas that make up the positioning index, Italy is 45th in the Opening dimension, 11th for Innovation, 56th for Efficiency and 12th for Equipment.

Only 7 countries rank in the high attractiveness range (equal to 4.8% of the total countries analyzed): Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, China, South Korea, and Australia. 17 countries - including Italy - have a good level of attractiveness (11.6% of the total); 74 countries have a medium attractiveness (50.7%); 47 countries a low attractiveness (32.2%). 


The Scientific Committee of the Global Attractiveness Index project is comprised of:
  • Ferruccio De Bortoli (Columnist, Il Corriere della Sera)
  • Lorenzo Bini Smaghi (Economist; former Member of the Executive Committee, European Central Bank)
  • Enrico Giovannini (Scientific Director, ASviS; former Italian Minister of Infrastrucutre and Sustainable Mobility)
  • Roberto Monducci (former Director of the Department of Statistics, ISTAT)


Partners

#ItalyisDifferent