A new sustainable human development indicator for small island developing states: A reappraisal from data envelopment analysis

Stéphane Blancard () and Jean-François Hoarau

Economic Modelling, 2013, vol. 30, issue C, 623-635

Abstract: This paper proposes a transparent and robust measurement of sustainable human development for developing economies. We focus in particular on small island developing states [SIDS] which appear to be highly vulnerable in both economic and environmental dimensions. Hence, our contribution is twofold. First, we introduce some new sustainability components into the standard Human Development Indicator [HDI]. Second, we adopt an endogenous weighting system rather than the more common equal weighting system, determined within the “Data Envelopment Analysis” framework (Charnes et al., 1978). We apply the recent multiplicative optimization approach of Zhou et al. (2010) to construct composite indicators. Then, by implementing this original composite indicator to a set of developing countries including 32 SIDS and comparing the outcomes with standard HDI, we demonstrate that these small islands are not particularly penalized in terms of sustainable human development.

Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis; HDI; Insularity; Weighting system; Vulnerability; Sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O11 O13 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999312003537
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: A new sustainable human development indicator for small island developing states: A reappraisal from data envelopment analysis (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:30:y:2013:i:c:p:623-635

DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2012.10.016

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly

More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().