Macroeconomic SDG Forecasts for 193 Countries

Authors: Austin G. Hamilton (austin.g.hamilton@gmail.com) and Aljaz Kuncic (kuncic@un.org)

There is a significant update to the Macroeconomics SDG Forecasts for Saudi Arabia paper. Now titled the Macroeconomics SDG Forecasts for 193 Countries. We have fully automated the Macroeconomics SDG Forecasts, which is now pre-calculated/generated for 197 countries/territories, which includes the identification of Nearest Neighbours SDG by SDG for all countries, average growth rates used for forecasts, and automatically built scenario/forecast charts. This improvement will make integrating the tool into almost any CCA and UNSDCF seamless.

Developing macroeconomic SDG by SDG forecasts as well as the SDG interlinkages/integrated approach draws on a methodology of nearest neighbour matching and utilizes Sachs et al. Sustainable Development Report SDG Index data (updated yearly) to build internationally comparable SDG by SDG (for all 17) scores across time, by a variety of methods including data substitution techniques, normalizations, index theory, and aggregation. Then, the nearest neighbour methodology identifies which countries in 2010 were in the most similar position to a country of focus in 2020 across all 17 goals – the nearest neighbours (NN) – implying maximum similarity to our country of focus in each SDG separately. For the SDG by SDG macroeconomic forecasts, we can then determine the top and bottom performers out of the NNs, which implies the countries in those groups have either had a good policy mix or a bad policy mix. The top NNs are where we can then look in detail to see what policies were applied in the decade preceding our analysis, which gives us a good indication of the potentially best policies to be localized to our focus country for maximum SDG by SDG acceleration.

Similarly, for the Macroeconomics SDG Forecasts, for instance for Saudi Arabia, one would simultaneously open (and keep opened) the files Auto Figures.xlsx (in the root folder; …\RCO-UNCT-Economist-Toolkit\Auto Figures.xlsx) and SDR2021_SAU_NN_onlycomplete.xlsx (in the folder Only complete inside the SDR2021 Excel Files; …\RCO-UNCT-Economist-Toolkit\Macroeconomics SDG Forecasts for 193 Countries\SDR2021 Excel Files\Only Complete\SDR2021_SAU_NN_onlycomplete.xls), and select Saudi Arabia as the focus country in the Auto Figures.xlsx, as per the image below (Note: always click "Enable Content" if prompted by Excel; the tool will not work if the file names are changed (Be careful if downloading the exact file(s) multiple times); Excel can take more than a minute to calculate everything, so be patient).

Click here to Download the Macroeconomic SDG Forecasts for 193 Countries & RCO-UNCT Economist Toolkit.