Economic competitiveness is at the core of the field of political economy. Whether actors face competition from imports or seek to export products or services abroad allows us to better understand support for trade liberalisation. But arguments referring to the economic competitiveness of districts are widespread in the field of International Political Economy, beyond trade and also beyond this field, for example in theories of economic voting. However, thus far, we lack a convincing measure of economic competitiveness, particularly on a subnational level. In this measurement paper, we propose two measures of economic competitiveness, namely i) revealed comparative advantage measure, and ii) a trade ration measure. In combination with labour survey from more than 30 countries across the world, we demonstrate the applicability of our measure and provide empirical applications in the realm of productivity and voting which lend face credibility to our approach.