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Exploring Partial Order of European Countries

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Abstract

Partial Order Theory has been recently more and more employed in applied science to overcome the intrinsic disadvantage hidden in aggregation, if a multiple attribute system is available. Despite its numerous positive features, there are many practical cases where the interpretation of the partial order can be rather troublesome. In these cases the analysis of underlying dimensions could be useful to uncover particular data structures. The paper shows a way of addressing the problem with the help of an actual case study, which deals with European opinions on services of general interest. In particular, a partial order of countries is firstly provided and then a method to detect dimensions is discussed and applied. The analysis stems directly from the Partially Order Set (poset) and Lattice theory with particular references to dimension theory and Formal Concept Analysis. The study is eventually able to pinpoint role and relevance of different attributes characterizing EU countries which are used to define the partial order.

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Notes

  1. The influence was quantified in terms of W matrix of Hasse diagrams (Annoni 2007; Brüggemann et al. 2001).

  2. On the contrary if you simultaneously consider quality and contract then conflicts would arise only due to these different criteria jointly considered. In this particular case, only Spain and Netherlands come out incomparable since Spain is worse than Netherlands for fix phone contract while it is better than Netherlands for rail quality.

  3. The statement of the theorem is wider, here only some results, useful to our specific case, are reported.

  4. Price of postal service is a very low discriminating item.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Business and Statistics, University of Milan, via Conservatorio 7, 20122, Milano, Italy

    Paola Annoni

  2. Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Müggelseedamm 310, 12587, Berlin, Germany

    Rainer Brüggemann

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  1. Paola Annoni
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  2. Rainer Brüggemann
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Correspondence to Paola Annoni.

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Annoni, P., Brüggemann, R. Exploring Partial Order of European Countries. Soc Indic Res 92, 471–487 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-008-9298-4

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