The top of Forbes 11th annual Best Countries for Business is dominated by European nations with seven of the top 10 and 18 of the top 25 calling Europe home, including Sweden, which leads the list for the first time. These countries score well across the board on personal and trade freedom, as well as innovation and low levels of corruption.
Europe’s supremacy is illustrated in the map below created by mapping solutions firm ESRI, which plotted the top 25 countries and bottom 10 on an interactive world map allowing readers to access economic data for the best and worst countries by clicking on a country name.
Forbes rated 139 countries on 11 different factors to determine the Best Countries for Business. Metrics included property rights, innovation, taxes, technology, corruption, freedom (personal, trade and monetary), red tape, investor protection and stock market performance (click here for complete coverage).
The Asia-Pacific region landed five countries in the top 25 with the U.S. and Canada the other representatives outside of Europe. The U.S. ranked No. 23, which marked the seventh straight year of declines for the world’s biggest economy. The U.S. ranked first in 2006.
Seven African nations populate the bottom 10 of the rankings, including Chad, which ranked last for the second straight year. High levels of corruption, bureaucracy and taxes continue to plague most of these nations.
