Complexity Economics and Sustainable Development
A Computational Framework for Policy Priority Inference

An AI framework for the impact evaluation of public spending on sustainable development in a multi-dimensional and complex world.

Omar A. Guerrero (Author), Gonzalo Castañeda (Author)

9781316516980, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 January 2024

420 pages
23.5 x 16 x 3 cm, 0.75 kg

'This important book makes excellent contributions on various levels. It introduces readers to sustainable development from a complexity perspective, and provides a masterclass on agent-based modelling and computational economics. Supported by a wealth of empirical data and case studies, the authors address numerous highly relevant topics in sustainability. The book is rich with original insights and policy recommendations. A must-read!' Dietmar Maringer, Professor of Computational Economics and Finance at the University of Basel, Switzerland

The Sustainable Development Goals are global objectives set by the UN. They cover fundamental issues in development such as poverty, education, economic growth, and climate. Despite growing data across policy dimensions, popular statistical approaches offer limited solutions as these datasets are not big or detailed enough to meet their technical requirements. Complexity Economics and Sustainable Development provides a novel framework to handle these challenging features, suggesting that complexity science, agent-based modelling, and computational social science can overcome these limitations. Building on interdisciplinary socioeconomic theory, it provides a new framework to quantify the link between public expenditure and development while accounting for complex interdependencies and public governance. Accompanied by comprehensive data of worldwide development indicators and open-source code, it provides a detailed construction of the analytic toolkit, familiarising readers with a diverse set of empirical applications and drawing policy implications that are insightful to a diverse readership. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Part I. A Complexity Approach to Sustainable Development: 1. Introduction
2. Policy prioritisation, complexity, and agent computing
3. Relevant data and empirical challenges
4. A computational model
5. Calibration and validation
Part II. A Global View of Sustainable Development: 6. The feasibility of the sustainable development goals
7. Government spending and structural bottlenecks
8. Public governance and sustainable development
9. The impact of international aid
Part III. A Focalised View of Sustainable Development: 10. Subnational development and fiscal federalism
11. Accelerators and systemic bottlenecks
12. Deprivation, income shocks, and remittances
13. Lessons and reflections.

Subject Areas: Development economics & emerging economies [KCM]