Hughes BB, Narayan K (2021) Enhancing integrated analysis of national and global goal pursuit by endogenizing economic productivity. PLoS ONE 16(2): e0246797. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246797

Analysis with integrated assessment models (IAMs) and multisector dynamics models (MSDs) of global and national challenges and opportunities, including pursuit of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), requires projections of economic growth. In turn, the pursuit of multiple interacting goals affects economic productivity and growth, generating complex feedback loops among actions and objectives. Yet, most analysis uses either exogenous projections of productivity and growth or specifications endogenously enriched with a very small set of drivers. Extending endogenous treatment of productivity to represent two-way interactions with a significant set of goal-related variables can considerably enhance analysis. Among such variables incorporated in this project are aspects of human development (e.g., education, health, poverty reduction), socio-political change (e.g., governance capacity and quality), and infrastructure (e.g. water and sanitation and modern energy access), all in conditional interaction with underlying technological advance and economic convergence among countries. Using extensive datasets across countries and time, this project broadly endogenizes total factor productivity (TFP) within a large-scale, multi-issue IAM, the International Futures (IFs) model system. We demonstrate the utility of the resultant open system via comparison of new TFP projections with those produced for Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios, via integrated analysis of economic growth potential, and via multi-scenario analysis of progress toward the SDGs. We find that the integrated system can reproduce existing SSP projections, help anticipate differential economic progress across countries, and facilitate extended, integrated analysis of trade-offs and synergies in pursuit of the SDGs.

Narayan, K., and Donnenfeld, Z. (2016). "Envisioning a Healthy Future: Africa's Shifting Burden of Disease." African Futures Paper No. 18. Institute for Security Studies and Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, Josef Korbel Schoo

Africa has the highest prevalence of communicable diseases in the world. In 2015, more than three times as many people died from AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than ten times as many people died from malaria as in the rest of the world combined. Non-communicable diseases are also increasing on the continent. This paper uses the International Futures forecasting system to explore the effects on human development of Africa’s achieving targets 3.3 and 3.4 of the Sustainable Development Goals: respectively, eradication of selected communicable diseases, and a reduction in premature deaths from non-communicable diseases by one-third by 2030.