POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF THE VILLAGE ECONOMIC RESILIENCE INDEX IN CENTRAL JAVA

Village development has become a national priority to reduce inequality and strengthen local independence, yet the effectiveness of the Economic Resilience Index (ERI) as a predictive tool for village economic conditions has not been thoroughly evaluated. This study aims to assess the predictive capacity of ERI in supporting evidence-based village development policies in Central Java, Indonesia. The study uses an ex-post facto quantitative approach based on ERI secondary data 2018–2024. The sample included 7,809 villages, divided into 4,998 trainings, 1,250 validations, and 1,561 tests. The analysis was performed with Decision Tree Regression (DTR) using JASP software. The free variable is ERI 2018–2022, while the bound variable is ERI 2023. The results showed excellent model performance (R² = 0.807; MAPE = 4.65%). The feature importance analysis confirmed ERI 2023 as the most dominant variable, while the contribution of historical data was lower. The decision tree identifies the value threshold that divides villages into groups with different economic resilience. These findings highlight the importance of recent data in refining the ERI framework and provide practical implications for policymakers in setting village development priorities. Strengthening ERI as a policy instrument may enhance the effectiveness of resource allocation and sustainable village development strategies.