Best Countries for Global Business

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The World Economic Forum (WEF) each year handicaps the economic-development race. The Global Competitiveness Report tallies 113 factors that contribute to an economy's competitiveness -- a buzzword that roughly boils down to how well a country is positioned to squeeze efficiency out of its businesses and attract companies and investment from abroad.

Components of the resulting Global Competitiveness Index range from the quality of a nation's roads to the independence of its judiciary to the incidence of tuberculosis to how easy it is to hire an engineer. Parts of the index are culled from official data; many others are drawn from a survey of 11,000 international business executives. This year TIME partners with the WEF to bring you in-depth data on 37 key countries at time.com/globalbusiness.

Note, this is different from what we reported October 10, 2007 on the World Bank's Doing Business 2008.

Why the Dollar Is a 98-lb. Weakling

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Spend some time in the hotels, restaurants and even newsstands of Western Europe these days, and as an American you understand pretty quickly that you're poorer than you once were. To be precise, you're 40% poorer--to go by the dollar-euro exchange rate--than you were six years ago.

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