Showcasing fuzzy set theory, this book highlights the enormous potential of fuzzy logic in helping to analyse the complexity of a wide range of socio-economic patterns and behaviour. The contributions to this volume explore the most up-to-date fuzzy-set methods for the measurement of socio-economic phenomena in a multidimensional and/or dynamic perspective. Thus far, fuzzy-set theory has primarily been utilised in the social sciences in the field of poverty measurement. These chapters examine the latest work in this area, while also exploring further applications including social exclusion, the labour market, educational mismatch, sustainability, quality of life and violence against women. The authors demonstrate that real-world situations are often characterised by imprecision, uncertainty and vagueness, which cannot be properly described by the classical set theory which uses a simple true–false binary logic. By contrast, fuzzy-set theory has been shown to be a powerful tool for describing the multidimensionality and complexity of social phenomena. This book will be of significant interest to economists, statisticians and sociologists utilising quantitative methods to explore socio-economic phenomena.

In the most recent years, Economic Statistics, like other applied and non-applied sciences, has been involved in the new intense data revolution, which regards all research fields, especially for data collection and data processing issues. The traditional statistical measures, used to monitor economic activities, are transformed from slow and periodic recordings into real-time information, with the need to integrate different sources of information. Complex data offer additional information to analyse economic phenomena, although main problems are still open questions regarding methodological issues, costs of collection, storing and analysis. In the light of this new scenario, the 2nd Conference on Economic Statistics “Statistical Analysis of Complex Economic Data: recent developments and applications”, which occurred in Florence on 7-8 February 2024, aimed to discuss the management and the usefulness of complex data in the analysis of economic phenomena, focusing on the recent developments and empirical applications. This Book of Short Papers includes 40 contributions presented and discussed during the Conference, offering the reader a summary of the contents of the Conference.

This series of books collects a diverse array of work that provides the reader with theoretical and applied information on data analysis methods, models and techniques, along with appropriate applications. Volume 2 begins with an introductory chapter by Gilbert Saporta, a leading expert in the field, who summarizes the developments in data analysis over the last 50 years. The book is then divided into four parts: Part 1 examines (in)dependence relationships, innovation in the Nordic countries, dentistry journals, dependence among growth rates of GDP of V4 countries, emissions mitigation, and five-star ratings; Part 2 investigates access to credit for SMEs, gender-based impacts given Southern Europe’s economic crisis, and labor market transition probabilities; Part 3 looks at recruitment at university job-placement offices and the Program for International Student Assessment; and Part 4 examines discriminants, PageRank, and the political spectrum of Germany.