Competitiveness is becoming to be more and more of a central criterion fort he assessment of policy-based intervention on national and EU levels. Adhering to this development is the internally projected fusion of the ZEWs competencies on the topic of competitiveness as area of special interest. In a co-operative effort of the departments Industrial Economics and Resource Economics, concepts, theories, and definitions of the more often than not vague idea of competitiveness are compiled at first. The subsequent step will be to identify indicators for the measurement of competitiveness and to discuss their implementation in sectoral and macroeconomic models. Finally, based on the terms thus identified it will be assessed how the ZEWs analytical instruments would have to be conceptionally adjusted in order to investigate and assess the effects of economic policy interventions on the competitiveness of certain sectors.