One market, one number? A composite indicator assessment of EU internal market dynamics.

We consider the lack of consensus about an appropriate theoretical framework linking sub-indicators as a defining characteristic of composite indicators. This intrinsic feature implies uncertainties about the appropriate normalisation and aggregation of the raw data. The two are related: index theory offers some valuable guidelines about their connection. Yet these do not fully solve the basic problem of expert disagreement. We embed such (residual) disagreement in the aggregation method itself. Specifically, we apply an impartial benefit-of-the-doubt weighting procedure, where weight restrictions incorporate the available information on experts’ opinions. We apply this procedure to the dynamic performance assessment of EU Internal Market effects, thereby highlighting its capacity to disaggregate member states’ observed performance shifts into changes relative to benchmarks and performance changes of the benchmarks (i.e. catching up versus genuine progress). Our results indicate that the latter factor is more important in explaining the observed progress.Dynamics; Market;

One Market, One Number? A Composite Indicator Assessment of EU Internal Market Dynamics

We consider the lack of consensus about an appropriate theoretical framework linking sub-indicators as a defining characteristic of composite indicators. This intrinsic feature implies uncertainties about the appropriate normalisation and aggregation of the raw data. The two are related: index theory offers some valuable guidelines about their connection. Yet these do not fully solve the basic problem of expert disagreement. We embed such (residual) disagreement in the aggregation method itself. Specifically, we apply an impartial benefit-of-the-doubt weighting procedure, where weight restrictions incorporate the available information on experts’ opinions. We apply this procedure to the dynamic performance assessment of EU Internal Market effects, thereby highlighting its capacity to disaggregate member states’ observed performance shifts into changes relative to benchmarks and performance changes of the benchmarks (i.e. catching up versus genuine progress). Our results indicate that the latter factor is more important in explaining the observed progress.composite indicators, aggregation, weighting, Internal Market

Creating Composite Indicators with DEA and Robustness Analysis: the case of the Technology Achievement Index

Composite indicators are regularly used for benchmarking countries’ performance, but equally often stir controversies about the unavoidable subjectivity that is connected with their construction. Data Envelopment Analysis helps to overcome some key limitations, viz., the undesirable dependence of final results from the preliminary normalization of sub-indicators, and, more cogently, from the subjective nature of the weights used for aggregating. Still, subjective decisions remain, and such modelling uncertainty propagates onto countries’ composite indicator values and relative rankings. Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis are therefore needed to assess robustness of final results and to analyze how much each individual source of uncertainty contributes to the output variance. The current paper reports on these issues, using the Technology Achievement Index as an illustration.factor is more important in explaining the observed progress.composite indicators, aggregation, weighting, Internal Market

Creating composite indicators with DEA and robustness analysis: The case of the technology achievement index.

Composite indicators are regularly used for benchmarking countries’ performance, but equally often stir controversies about the unavoidable subjectivity that is connected with their construction. Data Envelopment Analysis helps to overcome some key limitations, viz., the undesirable dependence of final results from the preliminary normalization of sub-indicators, and, more cogently, from the subjective nature of the weights used for aggregating. Still, subjective decisions remain, and such modelling uncertainty propagates onto countries’ composite indicator values and relative rankings. Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis are therefore needed to assess robustness of final results and to analyze how much each individual source of uncertainty contributes to the output variance. The current paper reports on these issues, using the Technology Achievement Index as an illustration.Indexes; Indicators; Robustness; Technology;

Monitoring human right to water in rural areas: a Nicaraguan case study

Much effort has gone into the recognition of the hu man right to water. Without doubt, this milestone influences governance and decision making processes at different scales. Now it is essential to shift discussion from legal and conceptual framework to p ractice. Taking this idea into account, the article proposes a methodology for monitoring the implement ation of the right. The work takes the legal and conceptual framework of the right, agreed by intern ational consensus, as a starting point. Moreover, l essons learnt from other indicators and indexes constructi on are considered. It is based on a water & sanitat ion rural services case study carried out in Nicaragua and pa rticularly in Jinotega and Matagalpa -rural departm ents from the north-central region-. The different categ ories of the right to water were included in survey s and structured interviews design that were conducted in rural households and water comities, respectively. Ingeniería sin Fronteras-ApD, an Spanish NGDO, prom oted the study in cooperation with local organizati ons -La Cuculmeca and Coalición de Organizaciones por e l Derecho al Agua (CODA)-. Results show how the inclusion of right to water dimensions gives pertin ent insights both as regards knowledge about the re al situation of rural communities as for improving gov ernance in rural water supply.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Constructing a knowledge economy composite indicator with imprecise data.

This paper focuses on the construction of a composite indicator for the knowledge based economy using imprecise data. Specifically, for some indicators we only have information on the bounds of the interval within which the true value is believed to lie. The proposed approach is based on a recent offspring in the Data Envelopment Analysis literature. Given the setting of evaluating countries, this paper discerns a ‘strong country in weak environment’ and ‘weak country in strong environment’ scenario resulting in respectively an upper and lower bound on countries’ performance. Accordingly, we derive a classification of ‘benchmark countries’, ‘potential benchmark countries’, and ‘countries open to improvement’.Knowledge economy indicators; Composite indicators; Multiple Imputation; Benefit of the doubt; Weight restrictions; Data Envelopment Analysis; Data impreciseness;

Mashup indices of development

Countries are increasingly being ranked by some new"mashup index of development,"defined as a composite index for which existing theory and practice provides little or no guidance to its design. Thus the index has an unusually large number of moving parts, which the producer is essentially free to set. The parsimony of these indices is often appealing -- collapsing multiple dimensions into just one, yielding unambiguous country rankings, and possibly reducing concerns about measurement errors in the component series. But the meaning, interpretation and robustness of these indices are often unclear. If they are to be properly understood and used, more attention needs to be given to their conceptual foundations, the tradeoffs they embody, the contextual factors relevant to country performance, and the sensitivity of the implied rankings to changing the data and weights. In short, clearer warning signs are needed for users. But even then, nagging doubts remain about the value-added of mashup indices, and their policy relevance, relative to the"dashboard"alternative of monitoring the components separately. Future progress in devising useful new composite indices of development will require that theory catches up with measurement practice.Economic Theory&Research,Information Security&Privacy,Governance Indicators,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Debt Markets

Environmental performance assessment of the transport sector in the european union

The European Union (EU) has been promoting diverse initiatives towards sustainable development and environment protection. One of these initiatives is the reduction of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 60% below their 1990 level, by 2050. As the transport sector is responsible for more than 22% of those emissions some strategies need to be taken towards a more sustainable mobility, as the ones proposed in 2011 White Paper on transport. Under this context, this study aims to evaluate the environmental performance of the transport sector in the 28 EU countries towards these goals, from 2015 to 2017. The transport environmental performance is measured through the composite indicator derived from the Benefit of the Doubt (BoD) model. The country transport environmental performance is assessed through the aggregation of multiple sub-indicators using the composite indicator derived from the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. The results indicate that the EU countries slightly improved their transport environmental performance, on average 2.8%. The areas where the inefficient countries need more improvement were also identified: reducing the GHG emissions from fossil fuels, increasing the share of transport energy from renewable sources and improving the public transport share of the total passenger transport.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment in Central and Eastern Europe. An index for measuring a country’s potential to benefit from technology spillovers

In the paper, we construct a composite indicator to estimate the potential of four Central and Eastern European countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) to benefit from productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) in the manufacturing sector. Such transfers of technology are one of the main benefits of FDI for the host country, and should also be one of the main determinants of FDI incentives offered to investing multinationals by governments, but they are difficult to assess ex ante. For our composite index, we use six components to proxy the main channels and determinants of these spillovers. We have tried several weighting and aggregation methods, and we consider our results robust. According to the analysis of our results, between 2003 and 2007 all four countries were able to increase their potential to benefit from such spillovers, although there are large differences between them. The Czech Republic clearly has the most potential to benefit from productivity spillovers, while Poland has the least. The relative positions of Hungary and Slovakia depend to some extent on the exact weighting and aggregation method of the individual components of the index, but the differences are not large. These conclusions have important implication both the investment strategies of multinationals and government FDI policies