Agent Computing and AI to Achieve the 2030 Agenda: New Methods to Infer Policy Priorities from Open Fiscal Data and Sustainable Development Indicators

代理计算和人工智能实现 2030 年议程：从公开财政数据和可持续发展指标推断政策优先事项的新方法

• 批准号: ES/T005319/1
• 负责人: Omar Guerrero
• 金额: $ 50.72万
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FT005319%2F1
• 关键词: Agent; Computing; AI; Achieve; 2030

How can we reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030? This is the most recurrent question in most international forums, and a central factor in how governments are formulating policy priorities around the world. However, how can we know if those priorities are conducive to the SDGs? Will developing countries repeat the same mistakes from adopting the Millennium Development Goals (regarded by many scholars as a failed agenda)? How can we improve the way in which governments formulate policy priorities? This project will harness novel data on public expenditure and development indicators, cutting-edge machine learning techniques, and state-of-the-art computational simulation methods to tackle these questions. In doing so, it will produce profound insights into how governments prioritise policy issues, and redraw the landscape of questions and methods that guide evidence-based policymaking.The project is structured in three pillars: (1) linking public expenditure data to SDGs, (2) identifying development indicators that are susceptible of direct policy interventions, and (3) modelling the process of policy prioritisation to assess development strategies. The first pillar builds on the growing movement of open fiscal data. The idea is to classify public expenditure programmes into the SDGs through deep learning. To train this classifier, I will employ a novel dataset from Mexico (unique in the world), in which government experts have assigned SDG labels to 4,000 expenditure programmes. This is the same technology used by Netflix to classify movies. Since hiring movie experts to categorise every movie is economically unfeasible, the company uses a sample of expert classifications, and exploits the texts describing the plots to train an algorithm and predict labels. In a similar way, I will exploit the texts describing Mexican expenditure programmes in order to assign SDG labels to unclassified data.The second pillar consists of identifying development indicators that are 'instrumental'. These are indicators susceptible of being intervened by specific policies that receive dedicated resources. For example, a vaccination campaign (a policy with resources) is designed to transform the indicator of incidence of measles (the indicator). Interestingly, there exist several development indicators that are not instrumental. For example, GDP per capita is a composite measure of various factors and no government has a specific policy to directly intervene on it. Thus, identifying instrumental indicators is key to understand and evaluate policy priorities, as governments only allocate resources to those development issues with policy instruments. I propose conducting an online survey across policymakers and experts who will be asked to identify instrumental indicators from a random sample. With the support of the UNDP and GIFT, this survey will be administered to UNDP functionaries and government officials around the world. Through this survey, I expect to classify approximately 100 to 150 development indicators.The third pillar builds on 1 and 2 in order to calibrate an agent-computing model of policy prioritisation. I have previously developed a similar model and validated it throughout various publications, for example, by estimating policy priorities, policy resilience, policy coherence, ex-ante policy evaluation, and the effectiveness of the rule of law. A distinctive feature of my model is that policy priorities (in the form of resource allocations across development indicators) emerge endogenously from an adaptive policymaking process that takes into account the complex network of interlinkages between SDGs (a central topic in the sustainability literature). Thus, these priorities can be defined over instrumental indicators, and the model can be calibrated to match the empirical expenditure patterns estimated in pillar 1. There is currently no tool that can achieve this.

如何在2030年前实现可持续发展目标（SDG）？这是大多数国际论坛上最经常出现的问题，也是世界各国政府如何制定政策优先事项的一个核心因素。然而，我们如何知道这些优先事项是否有利于可持续发展目标？发展中国家是否会重蹈千年发展目标（被许多学者视为失败的议程）的覆辙？我们如何改进政府制定政策优先事项的方式？该项目将利用有关公共支出和发展指标的新数据、尖端的机器学习技术和最先进的计算模拟方法来解决这些问题。在此过程中，它将对政府如何优先考虑政策问题产生深刻的见解，并重新绘制指导循证决策的问题和方法的图景。该项目由三大支柱组成：（1）将公共支出数据与可持续发展目标联系起来，（2）确定容易受到直接政策干预的发展指标，及（3）模拟政策优先次序的过程，以评估发展策略。第一个支柱是建立在日益增长的公开财政数据的基础上。这个想法是通过深度学习将公共支出计划分类到可持续发展目标中。为了训练这个分类器，我将使用一个来自墨西哥的新数据集（世界上独一无二的），其中政府专家为4,000个支出项目分配了可持续发展目标标签。这与Netflix用于电影分类的技术相同。由于聘请电影专家对每部电影进行分类在经济上是不可行的，该公司使用专家分类的样本，并利用描述情节的文本来训练算法并预测标签。同样，我将利用描述墨西哥支出计划的文本，为未分类的数据分配可持续发展目标标签。第二个支柱包括确定“工具性”发展指标。这些指标容易受到获得专用资源的具体政策的干预。例如，疫苗接种运动（一项有资源的政策）旨在改变麻疹发病率指标（指标）。有趣的是，有几个发展指标并不具有工具性。例如，人均国内生产总值是各种因素的综合衡量标准，没有一个政府有直接干预的具体政策，因此，确定工具性指标是理解和评估政策优先事项的关键，因为政府只会用政策工具为发展问题分配资源。我建议对决策者和专家进行一次在线调查，要求他们从随机抽样中确定工具性指标。在开发计划署和打击人口贩运全球倡议的支持下，将对世界各地的开发计划署工作人员和政府官员进行这项调查。通过本次调查，我预计将对大约100至150个发展指标进行分类。第三支柱建立在1和2的基础上，以校准政策优先级的代理计算模型。我以前曾开发过一个类似的模型，并在各种出版物中验证过，例如，通过估计政策优先事项、政策弹性、政策一致性、事前政策评估和法治的有效性。我的模型的一个显著特点是，政策优先事项（以跨发展指标的资源分配形式）内生于适应性决策过程，该过程考虑到可持续发展目标之间复杂的相互联系网络（可持续性文献的中心主题）。因此，可以根据工具性指标确定这些优先事项，并对模式进行校准，以符合支柱1中估计的经验性支出模式。目前还没有工具可以做到这一点。

项目成果

Quantifying the coherence of development policy priorities

量化发展政策优先事项的一致性

• DOI: 10.1111/dpr.12498
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Development Policy Review
• 影响因子: 1.7
• 作者: Guerrero O

Decentralized markets and the emergence of housing wealth inequality

去中心化市场和住房财富不平等的出现

• DOI: 10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2020.101541
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Computers, Environment and Urban Systems
• 作者: Guerrero O

Los Objetivos del Desarrollo Sostenible en Bogotá D.C. Un Análisis sobre las Asignaciones Presupuestales y su Impacto en los Indicadores del Desarrollo

波哥大特区的发展目标和发展指标的分析

• 发表时间: 2022
• 作者: Castañeda G.

Inferencia de Prioridades de Política para el Desarrollo Sostenible: Una Aplicación para el Caso de México

政治发展优先推论：墨西哥卡索的应用

• 发表时间: 2020
• 作者: Castañeda G.

Inferencia de Prioridades de Política para el Desarrollo Sostenible: El Caso Subnacional de México

政治发展优先推论：墨西哥埃尔卡索国家以下地区

• 发表时间: 2020
• 作者: Castañeda G.