Thursday, 25 March 2010: 17:45
The European Union (EU) is founded upon numerous treaties and has undergone expansions that has taken it from 6 members in 1951 to 27 states since 2007. The 2004 enlargement of the European Union was the largest single expansion of EU. Although to join the European Union each country must meet the (so called) Copenhagen criteria, the new state members are characterized by different cultural, political and economic background. Therefore it is necessary to monitor the socio-economic level of the member states, applying aggregated measures.
Human Development Index (HDI) is the best know indicator that is used by United Nations to evaluate and compare the level of development of countries. According to HDI value, states are recognized as high, medium and low developed countries. Since the level of development in Europe is relatively high in comparison with other regions, all EU members belong to the group of high developed countries and the variability of this measure is pretty small.
The aim of the research is evaluation of the socio – economic development level of the European Union members, and classification the EU states into groups of the similar countries, in terms of the aggregated measures. The investigation is provided for annual data from years 1990 – 2006.
Evaluation of the socio-economic development must be provided applying specially constructed measures that describe different aspects of the human life and activity. Therefore the socio – economic indicators are widely discussed in literature. In our research we consider diagnostic variables that describe six groups of indicators and are denoted as: G1 - living conditions, G2 - education, G3 - medical care and health, G4 - environmental protection, G5 - technical and economic infrastructure, and G6 - information society. To construct the synthetic measure, that describe the general socio-economic development level, 21 diagnostic variables are used.
The synthetic taxonomic measure (SMR) is evaluated for each country and every year of analysis, and it defines the distance between the benchmark and analyzed country in the level of the socio-economic development. The benchmark is defined as the hypothetical object that is characterized by maximal values of stimulants and minimal values of destimulants. Maximal and minimal values are estimated for every year separately (on the bases of all countries).
On the basis of the value of the taxonomic measure, that is evaluated for the i-th country in t-th period of time, it is possible to classify all countries into homogenous groups in terms of the level of socio-economic development.
Human Development Index (HDI) is the best know indicator that is used by United Nations to evaluate and compare the level of development of countries. According to HDI value, states are recognized as high, medium and low developed countries. Since the level of development in Europe is relatively high in comparison with other regions, all EU members belong to the group of high developed countries and the variability of this measure is pretty small.
The aim of the research is evaluation of the socio – economic development level of the European Union members, and classification the EU states into groups of the similar countries, in terms of the aggregated measures. The investigation is provided for annual data from years 1990 – 2006.
Evaluation of the socio-economic development must be provided applying specially constructed measures that describe different aspects of the human life and activity. Therefore the socio – economic indicators are widely discussed in literature. In our research we consider diagnostic variables that describe six groups of indicators and are denoted as: G1 - living conditions, G2 - education, G3 - medical care and health, G4 - environmental protection, G5 - technical and economic infrastructure, and G6 - information society. To construct the synthetic measure, that describe the general socio-economic development level, 21 diagnostic variables are used.
The synthetic taxonomic measure (SMR) is evaluated for each country and every year of analysis, and it defines the distance between the benchmark and analyzed country in the level of the socio-economic development. The benchmark is defined as the hypothetical object that is characterized by maximal values of stimulants and minimal values of destimulants. Maximal and minimal values are estimated for every year separately (on the bases of all countries).
On the basis of the value of the taxonomic measure, that is evaluated for the i-th country in t-th period of time, it is possible to classify all countries into homogenous groups in terms of the level of socio-economic development.