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Working paper 386
Gordon Anderson, Ian Crawford, Andrew Leicester, "Welfare Rankings From Multivariate Data, A Non-Parametric Approach", 2010-01-14
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Abstract: Economic and Social Welfare is inherently multidimensional. However choosing a measure which combines several indicators is difficult and may have unintended and undesireable effects on the incentives for policymakers. We develope a nonparametric empirical method for deriving welfare rankings based on data envelopment which avoids the need to specify a weighting scheme. The results are valid for all possible social welfare functions which share certain cannonical properties. We apply this method to data on human development.

Keywords: Welfare Rankings, Data Envelopment, Human development

JEL Classification: I3