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This paper provides a broad overview of the issue of rising inequality and builds an international and multidimensional taxonomy of economic inequality. We use a hierarchical cluster analysis that enables us to identify five groups of countries with distinctive economic inequality characteristics, which show that, despite national and regional specificities, both developed and developing countries face important difficulties in reducing social and economic disparities. The resulting classification may be useful to map out the various national realities of economic inequality across countries. The results suggest that there should be avoided a "one size fits all" international strategy to address the different patterns of inequality that we have identified across the World. Still, it is crucial to acknowledge the importance of the particularities of each cluster and each geographic region regarding a complex and multidimensional phenomenon that has become a global challenge for the 21st Century

This paper proposes a new approach to the classification of Developmental States (DS) based on their public efforts to foster human development. We conceptualize DS within a multidimensional framework that includes three main dimensions (economic, social and democratic), and run a hierarchical cluster analysis for 112 countries in order to build a multidimensional taxonomy of DS. We propose a countryclassification and characterize three country-groups with different developmental public efforts: i) the human development States; ii) the unbalanced developmental States and iii) the non-developmental States. Our multidimensional taxonomy offers a more complex understanding of the variety of public efforts devoted to promote human development, thus overcoming the restricted –economical– conception of DS, which is mainly focused to the East Asian region

Abstract This paper proposes a new approach to the classification of Developmental States (DS) based on their public efforts to foster human development. We conceptualize DS within a multidimensional framework that includes three main dimensions (economic, social and democratic), and run a hierarchical cluster analysis for 112 countries in order to build a multidimensional taxonomy of ds. We propose a country-classification and characterize three country-groups with different developmental public efforts: i) the human development States; ii) the unbalanced developmental States and iii) the non-developmental States. Our multidimensional taxonomy offers a more complex understanding of the variety of public efforts devoted to promote human development, thus overcoming the restricted -economical- conception of DS, which is mainly focused to the East Asian region.

The generation of food loss and waste (FLW) is a global problem for worldwide politics. About one-third of the food produced ends up in the rubbish before it is consumed. For this reason, it is essential to design and implement new strategies along the food supply chain (FSC) with the aim of reducing this FLW at each stage. However, not only mass quantification should be considered, but also economic and nutritional performance. The novelty of this study is the definition of a methodology based on the "distance to target" approach by means of multi-objective optimization to evaluate the economic and nutritional cost produced by this FLW. This methodology was applied to the Spanish food basket in 2015. The results revealed that 80% of the total FLW generated in economic and nutritional terms is concentrated in the agricultural production (53.3%) and consumption (26.3%) stages. In the first stages of the FSC, fruits (Dn eq.= 0.7), cereals (Dn eq.= 0.61), and vegetables (Dn eq.= 0.57) were the furthest from the distance target due to the great amount of FLW generated. Moreover, according to the normalized weighted distances obtained from the minimization of economic and nutritional cost, pulses (Dn eq. = 0.05–0.03) and eggs (Dn eq. = 0.02) were the more efficient food categories. The methodology described in this study proposes a single index to quantify the economic and nutritional cost of different food categories to facilitate the decision-making process. This index makes possible the definition of reduction strategies focused on specific food categories and depending on the FSC stage.