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

Laurens Cherchye, C. Lovell, Wim Moesen and Tom Van Puyenbroeck ()

Public Economics Working Paper Series from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Centrum voor Economische Studiën, Working Group Public Economics

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: composite indicators; aggregation; weighting; Internal Market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E13 E60 F02 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pp.
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.kuleuven.ac.be/ew/academic/econover/Papers/DPS0513.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www.econ.kuleuven.ac.be:80 (No such host is known. )

Related works:
Journal Article: One market, one number? A composite indicator assessment of EU internal market dynamics (2007)
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:wpe:papers:ces0513

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Public Economics Working Paper Series from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Centrum voor Economische Studiën, Working Group Public Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kristof Bosmans ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).