Evaluation of the financial and economic development of the European Union member states on basis of multiple indicators changed to multiple objectives

Abstract

Innovation has received more and more attention in the European Union since adoption of the Lisbon Strategy in 2000. In 2010 the European Commission 2010; European Council adopted a new strategy, Europe 2020, which stressed again the importance of innovations. Therefore it is important to evaluate the current level of the European Union Member States’ technological and economic development as well as its innovations impact on it. Innovation impact on economic development was analyzed by correlating various composite indices with GDP per capita indicator. A new conceptual model for the European Union Member States’ technological and economic development according to the world-system approach is proposed in this article. The world-system approach describes structure, relations and dynamics of international systems encompassing separate entities such as states. Three main roles of the states can be defined: core, semi periphery and periphery. Core states are the most technologically and economically developer ones and accumulate capital from peripheral states. The model consists of system of indicators, application of multi-criteria evaluation methods and summarized ranking. The system of indicators covers indicators describing technological, economic and social situation in the European Union treated as objectives. MULTIMOORA and TOPSIS methods were used together in order to improve robustness of the analysis. Summarized ranks resemble level of technological and economic development of certain European Union Member States and thus their roles in the European world system. There were three groups of Member States defined, representing core, semi-periphery and periphery of the European world-system. These ranks can be used in further studies instead of single indicators representing economic development (e.g. GDP per capita). In addition, some theoretical issues regarding multi-criteria evaluation methods are discussed in the paper.