Austria is also quite potent economically (ahead of Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Japan in GDP per capita).
Czechia and Slovakia are seeing their affluence rise, they've escaped the middle income trap and are heading into the lower end of the affluent group. Czechia is about as landlocked as it gets and yet their economy has increasingly prospered over the past few decades (they'll probably catch up to Spain in GDP per capita in the coming decade; and they're already roughly 3x that of Russia).
Obviously helps a lot to have many excellent regional trading partners that are affluent.
All of these countries save Switzerland are within the EU customs union. Being land-locked is a disadvantage precisely because you have a limited number of countries to negotiate trade with and not much leverage. Countries with a port can have trade relationships with the entire world.
Switzerland has always been able to/had to find a niche like banking or secrecy or regulatory arbitrage to prosper. But in theory they suffer from the same problem - limited trading partners and limited leverage.
adventured|3 years ago
Czechia and Slovakia are seeing their affluence rise, they've escaped the middle income trap and are heading into the lower end of the affluent group. Czechia is about as landlocked as it gets and yet their economy has increasingly prospered over the past few decades (they'll probably catch up to Spain in GDP per capita in the coming decade; and they're already roughly 3x that of Russia).
Obviously helps a lot to have many excellent regional trading partners that are affluent.
CountSessine|3 years ago
Switzerland has always been able to/had to find a niche like banking or secrecy or regulatory arbitrage to prosper. But in theory they suffer from the same problem - limited trading partners and limited leverage.