Assessment of Cohesion in Selected European Union Countries by Construction of Synthetic Indices of Disparities

摘要

Measurement of disparities between countries or regions is an important topic of many regional analysis and scientific papers. In European Union (EU), there is no mainstream approach of disparities measuring. The paper evaluates the level of economic, social and territorial disparities in selected EU countries, i.e. Visegrad Four countries in comparison with Germany and Austria in the period 2000-2010 on the basis of selected mathematical and statistical methods leading to construction of synthetic indices of disparities. The theoretical part of the paper defines the concept of disparities in the EU and methodological background of convenient statistical methods for disparities evaluation. The empirical part of the paper deals with the measurement, evaluation and comparison of disparities rates in selected EU countries through computed values of synthetic sub-indices of disparities and weighted (aggregate) synthetic index of disparities. All synthetic indices are calculated on the basis of Z-score standardized variables using Euclidean distance method.