Dubai has the most competitive economy in the Middle East and ranked higher for its competitiveness than Japan, Germany, France and New Zealand, a new study released on Monday said.

The emirate ranked 16th out of 65 economies surveyed in the National Competitiveness Report 2009, published by the Institute for Industrial Policy Studies of the National University of Seoul.

The study was commissioned by the Dubai Competitiveness Council, an arm of the Dubai Economic Council. The Korean institute has been publishing a report on competitiveness annually since 2001, but this is the first time that it has included Dubai.

With the United States at No. 1 followed by the Netherlands and Denmark in this year's study, other Gulf countries which have made to the list included Kuwait (30th), Oman (42nd) and Saudi Arabia (48th).

Dubai's strengths include its achievements in health and environment, intellectual property rights, corporate governance, government business strategy and attracting FDI.

Areas where it needs to show improvement include ethics and transparency, education and the quality of its work force, the study noted.

"This is one of the first steps towards our efforts in locating Dubai's position in the global markets," said Adel Al Falasi, executive director of the Dubai Competitiveness Council.

"The Dubai Competitiveness Council is trying to identify specific models and set of indexes for assessing competitiveness of cities and regions, which will enable us to target and address the obstacles to Dubai's global competitiveness on a timely basis as global markets evolve," Al Falasi said.

The authors of the competitiveness study -- Professors Dong-sung and Hwy-Chang Moon, both from the National University of Seoul -- said Dubai seems focused on rectifying and improving some of the weaknesses they cited in their report.