6 - The Feasibility of the Sustainable Development Goals

Summary

This chapter studies the feasibility of the SDGs to improve our understanding of the empirical link between government expenditure and development outcomes. First, we explain the strategy to produce prospective (counterfactual or otherwise) analyses with the computational model and two metrics to evaluate advances in development gaps. Second, we present simulation results showing the development gaps by 2030 when the historical budget, in real terms, is preserved during the remaining years of the current decade. Third, we conduct sensitivity analyses that involve changes in the overall budget size that modify the value observed at the historical period used for calibration. Fourth, we present some reflections on the results.