The extent to which income inequality and poverty vary within countries across different regions is very relevant for policy decisions and monitoring. However, sub-national measures are scarce, given the complexity of producing indicators at the regional level from the available data and the...

We estimate the business-cycles of G7 countries, as defined by an ideal 2-10 year bandpass filter applied to country-specific GDP target series (GDP-BP). Since this target series cannot be observed in real-time, due to the symmetry of the bandpass filter, we analyze and compare the leading...

Time distance is an innovative approach for looking at time-series data. Expressed in time units, the approach is easy to understand and provides a useful complement to existing methods. The time distance approach compares time series in the horizontal dimension, i.e. for a given level of the...

Historically, discussions of income inequality have emphasised cross-sectional comparisons of levels of inequality of income. These comparisons have been used to argue that countries with more inequality are less healthy, less democratic, more crime-infested, less happy, less mobile and less...

This paper investigates the notion and role of trust in modern societies as a first step towards the construction of indicators that could better inform our understanding of societal progress. Trust is commonly viewed as a proxy indicator of social capital, and a high level of trust is...

Health services account for a large and increasing share of production and expenditure in OECD countries but there are also noticeable differences between countries in expenditure per capita. Whether such differences are due to more services consumed in some countries than in others or whether...

This paper looks at different experiences in the development and use of societal progress indicator sets – at the European, national and sub-national level – with the aim of identifying useful lessons from these experiences. Five case studies are presented: the indicators used to support the...

Over the last three decades, a number of frameworks have been developed to promote and measure well-being, quality of life, human development and sustainable development. Some frameworks use a conceptual approach while others employ a consultative approach, and different initiatives to measure...

The purpose of this working paper is to provide an overview of recent discussions on the quality of Chinese data, and to describe and evaluate the institutional organization and methods of data compilation in China. The first part outlines key criticisms of Chinese data and examines their...

In recent years entrepreneurship has become a buzzword that?s entered the mainstream. Politicians continuously cite its importance and the need to create more entrepreneurial societies, and newspapers and television programmes frequently create themes around successful entrepreneurs. But, the...