Small and young businesses are essential for job creation, innovation, and economic growth. Even most of the superstar firms start their business life small and then grow over time. Small firms have less internal resources, which makes them more fragile and sensitive to macroeconomic conditions....

Der Länderindex Familienunternehmen 2024 vergleicht zum zehnten Mal seit 2006 die Standortbedingungen für Familienunternehmen in den wichtigsten Industrieländern. Konzeptionell orientiert sich der Standortvergleich an den Faktoren, die für die Geschäftsmodelle großer Familienunternehmen...

This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric and systematic literature review analysis of the literature on the Big Mac Index (BMI) to identify its foundational aspects and summarize key findings. The BMI, an informal measure of purchasing power parity, has garnered scholarly interest in...

This study aims to construct a sentiment index for predicting CPI in Vietnam. Adopting a lexicon-based approach, the study utilized two widely recognized sentiment dictionaries, specialized in financial and economic contexts, to build the sentiment index. Data was mined from nine official...

This study analyzes how sectoral stock volatility in the GCC region responds to global financial uncertainty shocks originating from the U.S. (CBOE VIX), Europe (VSTOXX-50), Bitcoin investors' Sentiment Indices (BSI), and disaggregated global Financial Stress Indicators (FSI) by using both the...

Sustainability indices are essential to track development progress and guide policy. They often aggregate diverse dimensions into a composite index, requiring value-based choices about the importance of each dimension (weighting) and the extent to which weaknesses in some area can be offset by...

This study aims to improve the understanding of quality of life (QoL) by evaluating key indicators, identifying influential factors, and assessing their relative weights. This study utilizes panel data from 181 cases across 32 European countries (2012-2017). The study employs exploratory and...

The extent to which women participate in the labor market varies greatly across the globe. If such differences reflect distortions that women face in accessing good jobs, they can reduce economic activity through a misallocation of talent. This paper builds on Hsieh et al. (2019) to provide a...

This note presents the 9th edition of the World Bank's Multidimensional Poverty Measure (MPM) database, drawing on the latest country data from the Global Monitoring Database (GMD) as of June 2025. The MPM offers a broader view of poverty by examining deprivations along three dimensions of...

The issue of introducing a vulnerability indicator in an aid allocation formula such as the Performance Based Allocation (PBA) used by several Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) has been discussed for a long time. Three reasons make it particularly desirable to now reconsider the issue.

Institutional investors increasingly value alternative assets in strategic asset allocation, with private debt emerging as a key asset class. However, its shortage of market history has hindered the development of standardized proxy benchmarks. For that, many institutional investors still do not...

The tourism industry is highly susceptible to global economic fluctuations and uncertainties. Understanding the asymmetric effects of macroeconomic factors on tourism demand is crucial for developing effective policies and strategies in the sector. This study examines the asymmetric impacts of...

To consider legal standards in empirical research designs, the qualitative information of the law needs to be transferred in a numerical variable. The challenge in creating such a variable consists in finding the right balance between high information density and transparency while keeping the...

Since the publication of the previous (2022) RISE edition, progress toward universal electrification reversed course for the first time in 20 years. About 685 million people, most of them living in Sub-Saharan Africa, lacked access in 2022. While RISE electricity access scores climbed in many...

We develop a statistical-methodological framework for a set of core commercial real estate market indicators, which consists of a market price index, a gross rent index, and a net rental yield index as well a vacancy rate. We argue that the indicators should be (macro-)consistent, meaning that...

This study develops a multi-dimensional composite index to measure financial inclusion in Ethiopia, using a two-stage Principal Component Analysis based on ten traditional and five digital indicators from 2015 to 2023. The results reveal a significant increase in Ethiopia's financial inclusion...

Digitalisation has become a transformative force revamping economies, societies, and governance systems. It has fostered innovation and enhanced global competitiveness in an interconnected world. This study aims to construct a composite index for digitalisation to evaluate global digitalisation...

Okun's misery index (MI), the sum of unemployment rate and inflation rate, is a popular measure of the state of the economy and thus of (macro) '' Economic Discomfort'' as well as of government performance. We calculate the MI and some augmentations for Germany (until 1990: West Germany) for the...