EUtopia launch

Hi everybody,

I have just launched a project on the measurement of social progress with Dirk Heine from the Common Future Think Tank. I hope you all participate - the success of the project hinges on a large sample size, so it would be great if you could spread the word! You can also join our project on FB: http://apps.facebook.com/eutopia

The problem: GDP per capita is a flawed and incomplete indicator of human development. Solely focusing on aggregate production, it neglects essential dimensions of human life - ranging from environmental issues to happiness and individual freedoms. While recent decades saw a surge in alternative indicators of development - with the Human Development Index as the most renown alternative - most indicators are at least as flawed and are often based on arbitrary assumptions.

Our approach: Following the conceptual framework proposed in the recent Report on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (2009) chaired by Nobel Laureates Joseph E. Stiglitz and Amartya K. Sen, our multivariate index seeks to address these issues. 

Focusing on 8 dimensions captured using 24 variables, we use a preference based weighting scheme to create an individual measure of development: While standard measures arbitarily assign weights to different dimensions or simply average, our approach derives the weights based on 32 questions that seek to elicit a preference relation. Based on the survey (or "quiz"), we calculate an alternative index and tabulate the results vis-a-vis the conventional GDP per capita.

Our goal: Each answer is stored anonymously and adds to our database of preference relations. Ideally, we hope that a stable weighting scheme will emerge as the number of observation increases (to a large N). While answering the quiz alone is fun enough, we hope to gather data through this project and generate a valuable contribution to the existing body of experimental literature on social indicators. 

Utmost effort has been put into making our "quiz" and measure as scientifically sound as possible. As for now, our dataset is confined to a 2008 cross-section of European countries but we will gradually include more countries and years. Please support our project by participating and asking your friends to join.

Please go to: http://eutopia.guoxu.org