The Relationship Between Sustainable Performance and Economic Value: An Evaluation of the Economic Implications of Sustainable Development Goals

ABSTRACT This paper aims at investigating the potential effect of sustainable performance on economic value on a global country level, responding to the recent calls for accelerating the worldwide achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Based on assessing the sustainable performance of the 193 UN country members for the period of 2015–2023, it is found that countries that achieve higher scores of SDGs have better economic values, represented in higher GDP outputs and lower inflation rates. These results provide two main contributions. First, the paper attempts to fill the gap in literature through providing insights on how the SDGs are being integrated into different contexts and the potential contribution of that integration to the national economic performance of each country. Second, the findings of the paper would be of interest to national/governmental policy and decision makers toward such integration.