South Korea Is The World’s Most Innovative Economy According To Survey

South Korea ranked as the world's most innovative economy in a survey conducted by Bloomberg. The Asian country notched the highest scores globally for the manufacturing value-added category and for tertiary effectiveness which means enrollment in higher learning and concentration of science and engineering graduates.

Korea Times noted Wednesday that South Korea landed on the second spot in the following categories: research and development intensity, high-tech density and patent activity. South Korea placed sixth in the research concentration category and 39th in the productivity category.

South Korea has topped the survey for three successive years now. For this year, it garnered a total of 91.31 points.

"If you're a really innovative economy, everything else being equal, you're going to tend to have higher productivity growth, and that goes hand in hand with rising living standards over time," global economist Jay Bryson said in the report. "The pie expands for everyone." 

Germany, Sweden, Japan and Switzerland also made it to the top five, while the United States and China fell on the 8th and 21st spots respectively, as noted by Bloomberg Tuesday.

Marcus Noland, director of studies at Peterson Institute for International Economics, said South Korea "squeezed between low-wage China on the one hand and more technologically advanced Japan on the other, so there's this sense of anxiety, or a certain degree of urgency, about maintaining this performance."

He also said that South Koreans are conscious of institutional issues that may be minimizing how much the country takes advantage of innovative behavior.

"Emphasis on wages being determined by tenure and seniority, together with a lack of pension mobility, means that there's not that much inter-firm or inter-sectoral movement of people. It's thought within South Korea that that hurts them, especially in this innovative area - there's less churn," Noland added.

Reports revealed that the survey began with more than 200 economies. The number was later trimmed down to 84 after some countries reportedly did not report data for at least six out of seven categories.