Aggregate Index for Measuring the Economic and Technological Performance of Nations

The crisis of international markets following recent events such as terrorist attacks, wars in the Middle East, high public debts, growing financial globalisation and integration have raised an interest in the analysis of country risk among industrialised countries as well as emerging nations. This paper develops new measures of economic and technological performances of countries by means of a systemic approach based on combinations of several indices. A comparative analysis using data from 51 countries for the period 2000-2002 shows the countries with high/low economic and technological performances. The results are substantially stronger and quicker than those obtained by conventional indicators