How can we assess the welfare of a society, its evolution over time and predict its change due to particular policy interventions? One way is to use survey-based welfare indicators such as the OECD Better Life Index. It invites people to weight a variety of quality of life indicators according...

How can we assess the welfare of a society, its evolution over time and predict its change due to particular policy interventions? One way is to use survey-based welfare indicators such as the OECD Better Life Index. It invites people to weight a variety of quality of life indicators according...

This paper analyzes international reserve diversification by examining changes in quantity shares of currencies held in foreign exchange reserves. It discusses alternative methodologies for constructing quantity shares and applies the preferred methodology to three sets of data on the currency...

Given independent observations of the income or the expense variable of some population, with underlying distribution G, given a poverty line Z, we introduce a general form of poverty measures used by economists to monitor the welfare evolution of this population. This latter includes the most...

Given independent observations of the income or the expense variable of some population, with underlying distribution G, given a poverty line Z, we study the Kakwani class of poverty measures. This measure is one of the most important tools for monitoring poverty in Economics. Here, we complete...

This paper proposes a general statistical framework for systemic financial stress indexes. Several existing index designs can be represented as special cases. We introduce a daily variant of the ECB's CISS for the euro area and the US. The CISS aggregates a representative set of stress...

This paper proposes a general statistical framework for systemic financial stress indices which measure the severity of financial crises on a continuous scale. Several index designs from the financial stress and systemic risk literature can be represented as special cases. We introduce an...

Quantifying productivity is a conditio sine qua non for empirical analysis in a number of research fields. The identification of the measure that best fits with the specific goals of the analysis, as well as being data-driven, is currently complicated by the fact that an array of methodologies...

The experience of past financial market turmoil suggests that in addition to eroding investor wealth, the severe consequences of rare extreme market events can spillover and impair the broader real economies. In this context, this paper is an evaluation of the methodological and empirical...

In October 2013, the European Commission presented a new indicator intended to capture innovation outputs and outcomes and thereby "support policy-makers in establishing new or reinforced actions to remove bottlenecks that prevent innovators from translating ideas into products and services that...