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The World Bank Institute’ s Knowledge Assessment Methodology has developed the Knowledge Economy Index (KEI) — an aggregate index representing the overall preparedness of a country or region towards the Knowledge Economy. The latest version of the KAM has been released together with the KEI 2007 rankings for 140 countries.
The KEI is constructed as the simple average of 4 subindexes, which represent the following 4 pillars of the knowledge economy:
- Economic Incentive and Institutional Regime (EIR)
- Education and Training
- Innovation and Technological Adoption
- Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Infrastructure
In 2007, Sweden emerges as the world’ s most advanced knowledge economy. Its rise to the top reflects strong advances in the economic incentive and institutional regime (rule of law), innovation (royalty and license fees payments and receipts, published journal articles and patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office), education (tertiary education enrollment rates) and the information infrastructure (telephone, computer and Internet penetration). Nordic countries, namely Denmark, Norway and Finland take up the next 3 spots on the KEI rankings. The United States has seen its KEI fall from 6th place in 1995 to the 10th position in the current 2007 rankings.