Measuring the macroeconomic performance among developed countries and Asian developing countries: Past, present, and future

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to measure and forecast the macroeconomic performance in developed countries and Asian developing countries over the periods from 2013 to 2016 and 2017 to 2020. We used four macroeconomic indicators: government gross debt, real GDP growth, inflation rate, and unemployment rate to construct a scalar-valued summary measure of macroeconomic performance. These indicators are inspired by data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based models, which allow for unequal weighting of the different economic objectives. Based on the resampling models of DEA, we developed a research procedure for solving the macroeconomic performance problem by integrating gauge and forecast. Two variants of resampling models of DEA, i.e., past-present and past-present-future, were used to gauge and forecast the relative performance for each country in each year. Throughout the analysis, emphasis is placed on a comparison of the performances of 12 Asian developing countries with those of the five developed countries. Our empirical results reveal that Switzerland, Singapore, and the United States have achieved the most successful macroeconomic management in a time-series.