National Competitiveness in Economics: An Outsider Concept? Yassine Ounnabi* and Lalla Latifa Alaoui University of Rabat-Souissi, Avenue Mohammed Ben Abdallah Ragragui, Al Irfane. BP 6430 Rabat Instituts, Rabat, Morocco; yassineounnabi@gmail.com, lalla.latifa.alaoui@gmail.com Abstract Background/Objectives: "Competitiveness is a multi-faceted concept. It tends to be broken down at various levels: The Product, the firm, the industry and the country". Its definition at the later has gotten numerous pundits from market analysts as Professor Krugman. The aim of the study is to present the theoretical foundations of the national competitiveness concept as an economic approach of living standards. Methods/Statistical Analysis: In this manner, the national competitiveness is commonly a linkage between "competitive power" of a country and the living standards of its population This connection is regularly taken by the competitiveness’ authors as “granted”. Findings: We present the theoretical foundations of the national competitiveness concept as an economic approach of living standards. When applied to the industry or the product level, the competitiveness sounds reasonable. However, its transposition into the national level has converted it to a controversial concept. Despite its complexity, the national competitiveness has become a widely used approach to analyze the economic performance of nations and to make cross national comparisons using several perspectives. Improvements/Applications: In this framework, this paper tries to present the national competitiveness as a complex and multi-approaches concept of economic and social performance of nations. Keywords: Competitiveness Perspectives, Economic Performance, Living Standards, National Competitiveness 1. Introduction Under market globalization, competitiveness seems to become a central objective of the strategies of nations. In this framework, the question is defining which competitiveness strategies to adopt in order to enhance the national competitive power. The multiple approaches of competitiveness give us many drivers to achieve it, as productivity, innovation and institutions. Competitiveness is a multi-approaches concept. We can distinguish four competitiveness’ perspectives: The economic perspective, the institutional perspective, the strategic perspective and the innovation perspective. Each of these approaches tries to explain the competitiveness by its own variables, even if it is not an easy task to put clear limits between them. Thus, we first present the competitiveness concept and its levels of analysis (Section 2). The approaches of competitiveness are then discussed in Section 3. Section 4 presents the main measures of competitiveness. Finally; Section 5 stresses the criticism to the national competitiveness concept and provides the conclusions to the article. 2. Competitiveness in Economics: An Outsider Concept? Given the high frequency of the use of the competitiveness concept in the political and the academic spectrums, one may be surprised by the absence of a universal definition, one common definition of this concept. This weakness has placed the competitiveness in the zoom scope of many Indian Journal of Science and Technology, Vol 12(31), DOI: 10.17485/ijst/2019/v12i31/146624, August 2019 ISSN (Print): 0974-6846 ISSN (Online): 0974-5645 *Author for correspondence