This Handbook aims to provide a guide for constructing and using composite indicators for policy makers, academics, the media and other interested parties. While there are several types of composite indicators, this Handbook is concerned with those which compare and rank country performance in...

The Consumer Empowerment Index is a pilot exercise, aimed at obtaining a first snapshot of the state of consumer empowerment as measured by the Eurobarometer survey (Special Eurobarometer n. 342). It is neither a final answer on empowerment nor a comprehensive study on all the different facets...

Since Kyoto Protocol, the international community is compromising itself to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. However, the implementation of energy policies, such as the construction of renewable energy installations, in many cases doesn't suit with local perceived necessities and causes...

Most insights of environmental economics are in line with the standard neo-classical economic model of rational behaviour, formulated in terms of maximisation of utility in general, or profits in particular. The standard theory of environmental policy is a case in point. However, the...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to deal with one of the technical difficulties of private and social cost–benefit analysis, i.e. the choice of the proper cost–benefit aggregation rule (or method) to use, when a private capital investment decision has to be taken or a public project...

This report contains a description of environmental policy tools, gives an overview of post-Normal science (bridge between complex systems and environmental policy), ecological economics, the incommensurability principle, the mulitcriteria evaluation and the NAIDE method (fuzzy information).