ABSTRACT
The construction of internationally comparable and harmonized measures is particularly challenging since they must guarantee an equivalent measurement of the same theoretical concept for different countries. This is especially true for areas in which the empirical manifestations of the concept vary between countries, for reasons such as specific historical traditions, institutional peculiarities or cultural differences. In these instances, nationally specific conditions may be blurred or will not be adequately captured when following the principles of procedural equivalence (Johnson 1998).
