Michaela Saisana

European Commission | ec · Joint Research Centre (JRC)

The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor (hereafter ‘Monitor’) is a monitoring and benchmarking tool first developed in 2017 to allow European cities to compare and contrast their areas of excellence and improvement in terms of culture and creativity. Since its first launch, the Monitor has served as a guidance tool for policy makers at local, nati...

An overview of the "COINr" R package, which is for building and analysing composite indicators.

The link between culture and sustainable development has become a major research topic in the past few years. [...]

This open access book covers the use of data science, including advanced machine learning, big data analytics, Semantic Web technologies, natural language processing, social media analysis, time series analysis, among others, for applications in economics and finance. In addition, it shows some successful applications of advanced data science solut...

Asia and Europe have made connectivity between people, businesses and institutions a top political priority in the frame of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) intergovernmental cooperation forum. In the ASEM context, policy leaders agreed that improving connectivity between countries should contribute to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Conne...

The European Green Deal is the most ambitious and challenging goal set by the European Commission. Aiming to make the European Union, the world’s second-largest economy, climate-neutral by 2050, the European Green Deal will transform EU societies and industries. To support the European Commission in this effort, the JRC created a set of indicators...

Empty cultural places, drastically reduced mobility and tourism blockade as an effect of COVID-19 confinement measures not only generate an evident economic damage to cultural institutions, companies and workers but also create a strong economic and social discomfort at city level. Although many EU member states are now entering into a de-confineme...

Europeans are, on average, better educated and live healthier, longer and more prosperous lives today than at any point in the past. However, this view on average achievements obscures large disparities, both within and between European countries. The income of the richest 20 % of households in Europe is on average 5 times higher than that of the p...

Culture is an integral part of a city's quality of life, a driver of urban change, and a genuine economic sector. To support benchmarking of urban culture and facilitate peer learning among policymakers, the European Commission has recently created the ‘Cultural and Creative Cities Index’. While this index builds on a standardised method to aggrega...

This Chapter presents a set of quantitative modelling approaches, connected to various steps of the policy cycle, that aim at helping policy-makers and all social actors involved, by providing a scientific sound framework for a systematic, coherent and transparent analysis. Practical guidelines for structuring policy problems by using uncertainty a...

The COIN Tool is a free Microsoft Excel-based tool designed to help users from research institutions, international organisations, European Union institutions, national and local governments, among others, in the process of building and analysing composite indicators. It was developed by the European Commission's Competence Centre on Composite Indi...

This second edition of the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor shows how well 190 cities in 30 European countries perform on a range of measures describing the ‘Cultural Vibrancy’, the ‘Creative Economy’ and the ‘Enabling Environment’ of a city. In 2018, Madrid, Geneva and Győr used the Monitor to pursue different objectives, such as analysing inv...

How can we measure culture in urban areas? Can empirical metrics on culture function as an urban planning tool for cities' well-being? This paper fits into the research path examining the role of culture as a resource for development, with a specific focus on empirical measurement aspects. A novel dataset (The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor-C...

This study employs statistical methods to further develop the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) Scoreboard in line with the European Parliaments regulation of 2011, so as to make it an even better information aggregation, decision making and communication tool. The contribution to the literature and ongoing policy debate is threefold. First,...

Eradicating poverty is one of the global challenges defined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, this goal cannot be achieved without reducing the gap between the rich and the poor. Development Finance International and Oxfam have developed an international monitoring framework — the Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) index...

The Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) index aims at measuring the extent to which governments are undertaking the task of reducing inequality taking into account three main aspects: progressivity of spending, progressivity of tax and progressivity of labour policy. These pillars are used to organise and aggregate nine indicators into a single...

The European Commission highlights the role of regulation in creating obstacles to the functioning of the single market and holding back the potential for growth and job creation in the EU economies. Removing such barriers opens up opportunities and has a positive impact on the productivity and competitiveness of the EU economy. In this context, th...

The present report was produced on the initiative of the European Union with the aim of providing a scientific-based contribution to the policy discussions on connectivity in the framework of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). The key findings are: i) connectivity can help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, but challenges lie ahead; ii) pol...

The cultural and creative sectors are one of the most dynamic branches of the EU economy, fostering innovation, growth and job creation as well as social cohesion. But which cities do perform best in culture and creativity? Does the population size determine their performance? The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor - a new tool developed by the...

This report is meant to document the use of the Global Food Security Index (GFSI) to inform the food security situation in countries of interest for DEVCO. Since the GFSI is a composite indicator, a clear understanding of its modelling choices is needed to insure a well-informed use of the indicator.

Composite indicators are very popular tools for assessing and ranking countries and institutions in terms of environmental performance, sustainability, and other complex concepts that are not directly measurable. Because of the stakes that come with the media attention of these tools, a word of caution is warranted. One common misconception relates...

This first edition of the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor shows how well 168 selected cities in 30 European countries perform on a range of measures describing the ‘Cultural Vibrancy’, the ‘Creative Economy’ and the ‘Enabling Environment’ of a city. The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor is designed to help national, regional and municipal p...

Multidimensional measures (often termed composite indicators) are popular tools in the public discourse for assessing the performance of countries on human development, perceived corruption, innovation, competitiveness, or other complex phenomena. These measures combine a set of variables using an aggregation formula, which is often a weighted arit...

The United States tops the ranking of the 2016 edition of the Elcano Global Presence Index, with an index value of 2,457 points. China is 2nd (therefore hanging on to the position it reached last year and recording 727 points). These two countries are followed by Germany (3rd, 623 points), the United Kingdom (4th, 566 points) and France (5th, 516 p...

Composite indicators (composite indicators) have received substantial attention in recent years and various methodologies have been developed to handle different aspects of the issue. This report examines a number of methodologies with a view to clarifying how they relate to the development of composite indicator. Several methods are investigated s...

Multi-dimensional measures (often termed composite indicators) are popular tools in the public discourse for assessing the performance of countries on human development, perceived corruption, innovation, competitiveness, or other complex phenomena. These measures combine a set of variables using an aggregation formula, which is often a weighted ari...

Cultural and creative sectors (CCS) in Europe have shown strong resilience to the recent economic crisis and they are expected to expand further due to their function as forerunners in digital innovation. The creative population, one of Europe’s key strengths and the CCS, the 3rd biggest employer in the EU, have a strategic role to play in the econ...

The Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) attempts to summarise complex and interrelated concepts relevant to human capital and talent competitiveness at the national scale in 109 countries worldwide. In so doing, it raises some conceptual and practical challenges, which are discussed in the GTCI 2015–16 report. Herein, the focus is on the pra...

Composite indicators are aggregations of measurable variables (indicators) that aim to quantify underlying concepts that are not directly observable, such as competitiveness, freedom of press or climate hazards. Composite indicators, otherwise referred to as performance indices, are employed for many purposes, including policy monitoring. Sensitivi...

This article develops a composite indicator to monitor the levels of civic competence of young people in Europe using the IEA ICCS 2009 study. The measurement model combines the traditions in Europe of liberal, civic republican and critical/cosmopolitan models of citizenship. The results indicate that social justice values and citizenship knowledge...

This study develops a series of Drug Consequences Indices (DCIs) measuring interstate variations in the harmful consequences of heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana in the US from 2000 to 2009. Indicators measuring drug-related health, social and economic, and crime and disorder consequences were selected from key drug data systems. Usin...

Conceptual and practical challenges are inevitable when trying to understand and model the fundamentals of innovation at the national level worldwide. The Global Innovation Index (GII) considers these conceptual challenges in Chapter 1 and deals with practical challenges—related to data quality and methodological choices—by grouping country-level d...

The chapter assesses the list of innovation achievers and pillar outperformers over the period 2011–14 and identifies a select group of 11 innovation outperformer economies. The chapter stresses that, at the country level—especially in developing countries—the emphasis on fostering innovation has increased and national innovation policies and progr...

The Gender-Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (Gender-GEDI) was launched in 2014 by the GEDI Institute. The Gender-GEDI is meant to serve as a monitoring tool of high potential female entrepreneurship in 30 developed and developing countries. The Gender-GEDI uses the most recent data on 30 quantitative indicators grouped into 15 pillars...

Culture and creativity do matter. They matter because they can enrich our lives. They matter because our rich and diverse culture helps bring us together – it’s part of our European identity. Hopefully, the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor will be a cornerstone in evidencing the importance of putting culture and creativity at the heart of the E...

Since 2009, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has been publishing its annual ICT Development Index (IDI), which benchmarks countries' performance with regard to ICT infrastructure, use and skills. The JRC analysis, conducted at ITU's invitation, suggests that the conceptualized three-level structure of the 2015 IDI is statistically so...

Civic competence can be defined as the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed for active participation in civil society, political and community life. Civic competence is not only a tool for empowering the individual to take control over their own lives but it can also help by underpinning democracy and social and economic development. For...

The latest edition of the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) was presented and discussed on January 2014 during the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos. The EPI is released biannually since 2006 by Yale and Columbia Universities, in collaboration with the Samuel Foundation and the WEF. The EPI ranks how well countries perform on h...

This article discusses the participatory creation of the Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool (MPAT), a survey-based thematic indicator developed in China and India. The core of the article focuses on the use of expert elicitation to inform the construction of MPAT’s household and village surveys, the cardinalisation of survey responses, and th...

The JRC analysis suggests that the conceptualized multi-level structure of the 2013 WJP Rule of Law Index is statistically sound in terms of coherence and balance: the overall index as well as the eight dimensions are determined by all underlying components. Furthermore, the analysis has offered statistical justification for the use of equal weight...

This paper first develops a framework for the analysis of national research systems, with particular focus on the excellence of scientific and technological research, a central topic for the current European research and innovation policy discourse. Next, after carefully considering measurement and data issues, it proposes a set of strong and weake...

This report presents the results of a project to develop a family of U.S. Drug Consequences Indices (DCIs). The DCIs are a complementary set of indices that measure the harmful consequences of illegal drugs in a standardized way. The National DCIs measure trends in illicit drug-related consequences for the U.S. as a whole, and the State DCIs measur...

The Small Business Act for Europe (SBA) reflects the Commission's political will to recognise the central role of SMEs in the EU economy. The calculation of 2012 SBA principles has moved from a one way design process of the previous versions to an iterative process with the JRC (since 2011) with a view to laying the foundation for a sound tool. Thi...

A sustainable society is considered to be a society that is economically viable, environmentally sound and socially responsible. Developing a gauge of economic, environmental and social progress has been on the international agenda for at least two decades. At the European level, it has received a boost from the publication of the 2009 Stiglitz-Sen...

Education is a key policy area for achieving democracy-related goals. In this respect the European Commission have developed indicators to monitor the levels of active citizenship across Europe (Hoskins et al 2006 and Hoskins and Mascherini 2009) and levels of civic competence across Europe (Hoskins et al 2008). The 2020 Education and Training poli...

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by Transparency International measures perceptions of corruption in the public sector in different countries around the world. Upon invitation of the CPI team, the JRC assessed the new methodology in the CPI 2012 and analyzed the consequences that come with this change. The statistical assessment of the Index...

Education is a key policy area for achieving democracy-related goals. In this respect the European Commission have developed indicators to monitor the levels of active citizenship across Europe (Hoskins et al 2006 and Hoskins and Mascherini 2009) and levels of civic competence across Europe (Hoskins et al 2008). The 2020 Education and Training poli...

Analysis of a spatial phenomenon is to a great extent affected by the frequent irregular structures and/or the preferential clustering of the sampling schemes. To obtain representative statistics for an area of interest, the influence of clustered measurements needs to be reduced by attributing them lower weights. In this case study, two standard m...

Multidimensional measures (composite indicators, indices, ratings, league tables) can effectively underpin the development of data-driven narratives in support to policy. A controversy surrounds the use of these measures. We review some good and bad practices from the recent literature. We then discuss briefly a decalogue to develop a multidimensio...

This paper looks at the role of statistics-based knowledge in the making of EU policy. We highlight shortcomings in the use of statistical indicators made in the course of the Lisbon strategy, ended in 2010. In our opinion the shortcomings are: (i) The paradox of the coexistence within the same European Commission of two holistic frameworks: the St...

Composite indicators aggregate a set of variables using weights which are understood to reflect the variables' importance in the index. In this paper we propose to measure the importance of a given variable within existing composite indicators via Karl Pearson's `correlation ratio'; we call this measure `main effect'. Because socio-economic variabl...

The most popular world university rankings are routinely taken at face value by media and social actors. While these rankings are politically influential, they are sensitive to both the conceptual framework (the set of indicators) and the modelling choices made in their construction (e.g., weighting or type of aggregation). A robustness analysis, b...

MUNDA G. and SAISANA M. Methodological considerations on regional sustainability assessment based on multicriteria and sensitivity analysis, Regional Studies. This paper proposes the use of a non-compensatory multicriteria approach combined with sensitivity analysis for constructing composite indicators of sustainability. An illustrative example on...

The present study aims to critically assess the methodological approach taken by the Observatoire de la Compétitivité to build the EU Competitiveness Index (2008 data), by addressing two key questions: (1) Can the Scoreboard of Competitiveness of the Fontagné report be used as a conceptual framework for building an Index - what are the necessary ch...

The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool (MPAT) was developed by the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development with a view to assess local-level poverty in rural regions around the globe. The MPAT is a survey-based thematic indicator of ten dimensions, from Food & Nutrition Security to Domestic Water Supply, Health & Healthcare, to Gen...

This study looks at the ongoing debate within the European Commission on the EU 2020 strategy and in particular to the potential role of statistics-based knowledge in the strategy , and takes partly inspiration from a reflection on the Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs EU 2020 in the framework of the implementation of the European economic recove...

The European Lifelong Learning Indicators (ELLI) project is an initiative led by the Bertelsmann Foundation, and one of its aims is to develop, test and pilot a new aggregate measure, the ELLI-Index, for country-level assessment of lifelong learning in the EU Member States. The conceptual framework for the ELLI-Index is loosely based on the UNESCO'...