Seth, S orcid.org/0000-0002-2591-6977 and McGillivray, M (2018) Composite indices, alternative weights, and comparison robustness. Social Choice and Welfare, 51 (4). pp. 657-679. ISSN 0176-1714
Abstract
Composite indices are widely used in development economics and can often be highly influential. Yet most remain controversial owing to inter alia the arbitrary selection of component weights. Several studies have proposed testing the robustness of rankings generated by composite indices with respect to alternative weights but have not provided sufficient guidance on the choice of these alternatives. This paper proposes a holistic yet theoretically novel approach for selecting sets of alternative weights and assessing comparison robustness that is applicable to linear composite indices with any finite number of dimensions. Our approach is founded on the main normative assumption that a consensus has been reached on the minimum and the maximum allowable weights that should be assigned to the components. This approach is applied to robustness testing of inter-temporal country improvements generated by arguably the world’s most influential composite development index, the UNDP Human Development Index.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018, The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Economics Division (LUBS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 15 May 2018 11:28 |
Last Modified: | 13 Dec 2018 09:28 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Verlag |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s00355-018-1132-6 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:130841 |