So, congratulations are in order. The Netherlands has gone up from 15th to 8th place in the grandly-named International Institute for Management Development Index – a fact much heralded on the front page of today’s Financieele Dagblad.

But it was only a few weeks ago we were told that the Netherlands had fallen from 20th to 22nd place on the Grant Thornton Super Growth Index. And last year we learned that Holland had dropped from 5th to 7th on the AT Kearney Globalisation Index.
So what’s the real situation? Time to look a little further. The Netherlands is 22nd on the World Bank’s index of countries where it is easy to do business – but is the ninth easiest country in which to close a business.
In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s E-readiness rankings, the Netherlands was in 6th place last year – up from 8th in 2005. But in terms of the overall tax burden, Holland is in 16th place on the Forbes Misery Index.
And it does not feature at all in the Wall Street Journal’s top 10 index of countries with the most economic freedom.
Are you any the wiser? The list is endless. And then on top of the national indices, come the city-by-city lists. Sidelines will spare you that. Perhaps, somewhere out there, there is a statistician who can come up with a ranking of the rankings?