Assessment of the competitiveness of countries as a tool to increase the sustainability of their socio-economic development

The competitiveness of individual economies belongs to the issues frequently discussed among experts as it is closely connected with and reflects the economic situation in different countries. The focus of the present article is the survey of the development of competitiveness of selected economies and the subsequent comparison thereof. In order to further specify this focus, we concentrated on the economies of the Russian Federation and Germany. These economies are regarded as strong and efficient global economies that put emphasis on continuous growth. The economy of the Slovak Republic was selected as the secondary focus of the article as it is an open economy cooperating with major economic players, including the countries representing the subject of this article. The key criterion for the evaluation of the development was the Global Competitiveness Index and the monitored period was 2008-2017. The article contains two basic parts; the first part represents a theoretical framework of the discussed topic and the second part provides the comparison and confrontation of competitiveness in the selected economies. The final part of the article contains the identification of potential weaknesses and strengths of the evaluated economies