Judging the Performance of an Economy with an Application to the Netherlands

This article describes a method of judging the performance of an economy of a member country of the European Community relative to the performance of the rest of the Community. For the purpose of illustration the article contains an application to the Dutch economy during differently composed coalition governments. First, developments of seven objective indicators are examined. Secondly, three subjective indicators are presented: a left, a centre and a right indicator. It appears that judgements of economic developments are not necessarily positive (or negative) if the colour of the subjective indicator corresponds (or opposes) the colour of the coalition government in office