This Handbook is a guide for constructing and using composite indicators for policy makers, academics, the media and other interested parties. While there are several types of composite indicators, this Handbook is concerned with those which compare and rank country performance in areas such as industrial competitiveness, sustainable development, globalisation and innovation.  The Handbook aims to contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of composite indicators and to an improvement of the techniques currently used to build them.  In particular, it contains a set of technical guidelines that can help constructors of composite indicators to improve the quality of their outputs.

It has been prepared jointly by the OECD (the Statistics Directorate and the Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry) and the Applied Statistics and Econometrics Unit of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission in Ispra, Italy.

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