Methods for Constructing Non-Compensatory Composite Indices: A Comparative Study

Matteo Mazziotta and Adriano Pareto

Forum for Social Economics, 2016, vol. 45, issue 2-3, 213-229

Abstract: Composite indices are being more and more used to measure multidimensional phenomena in social sciences. Considerable attention has been devoted in recent years to the methodological issues associated with index construction, such as non-compensability and comparability of the data over time. The aim of this paper is to compare two non-additive approaches: the Mazziotta--Pareto Index (MPI) and the Weighted Product (WP) method. The MPI is a nonlinear composite index that rewards the units with ‘balanced’ values of the individual indicators. The WP method implicitly penalizes the ‘unbalance’ and allows building, for each unit, two closely interrelated composite indices: a ‘static’ index for space comparisons and a ‘dynamic’ index for time comparisons. The MPI entails an equal weighting of the indicators, and only relative time comparisons are allowed. The indices based on the WP method give more weight to low values, and allow for both absolute and relative time comparisons. An application to indicators of well-being in the Italian regions in 2006 and 2011 is presented.

Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/07360932.2014.996912 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:fosoec:v:45:y:2016:i:2-3:p:213-229

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RFSE20

DOI: 10.1080/07360932.2014.996912

Access Statistics for this article

Forum for Social Economics is currently edited by William Milberg, Dr Wolfram Elsner, Philip O'Hara, Cecilia Winters and Paolo Ramazzotti

More articles in Forum for Social Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().