Who Meets the Standrads: A Multidimensional Approach

We consider here the evaluation of the performance of a society with respect to a given set of targets. We provide a characterization of an intuitive evaluation formula that consists of the mean of the shares of the achievements in the targets. The criterion so obtained permits one not only to endogenously determine who meets the standards and who does not, but also to quantify the degree of fulfilment. Two empirical illustrations are provided: the compliance of the European Union Stability and Growth Pact, on the one hand, and the evaluation of research excellence in the Spanish universities, on the other hand.