No. 81. A STUDY OF THE DIACHRONIC EVOLUTION OF THE EU’S STRUCTURAL INDICATORS USING FACTORIAL ANALYSIS

S. Karagiannis. 2006.

 

The European Council decided on March 2000 during the Lisbon Summit a new strategic goal for the next decade: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. The aim of this study is to evaluate the above strategy through the analysis of 12 basic structural indicators that, according to the European Commission, reflect the progress of the E.U. in the relevant fields of the strategy (economic growth, employment, social cohesion, environment protection, economic reforms and research & innovation). Using the Correspondence Factorial Analysis (AFC) and the Classification at Serial Hierarchy (CAH) methods we achieve a comprehensive study of the evolution of the relevant positions of the E.U. member – states, with regards to the 12 indicators, for the 1995 – 2004 period. Thus, without the use of any economic models or hypothesis and through the discovery of new variables with qualitative characteristics we are able to evaluate this strategy of the union, that overall appears far from the agreed targets.

 

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