The 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are plans developed by the United Nations (UN) with the aim of eliminating extreme poverty, reducing income inequality and protecting the planet by the year 2030. Adopted by 193 countries, the SDGs have inspired people from diverse disciplines to implement various innovative ideas to fight poverty and inequality.
Particularly, managerial economists have a primary role in developing ideas to utilize resources more efficiently and eliminate poverty from the earth. Managerial economics is concerned with the use of economic models in managerial decision making. It is about managing and allocating scarce resources in an efficient manner to meet unlimited human wants. Managers use managerial economics and its concepts to make effective decisions with regard to the allocation and utilization of resources.
To ensure that poverty and inequality are reduced as envisaged by the UN sustainability goals, managerial economists have a key role in providing economic models that will work.
The first four SDGs are: no poverty, zero hunger, good health and wellbeing, and quality education. To achieve zero poverty and zero hunger, it is important for world leaders to make decisions that will enhance increased income and food production. Quality education and good health can also be achieved if the available resources are utilized efficiently to improve education and health systems. Thus, these sustainability goals affect managerial economics by highlighting the plan for managing resources more efficiently to solve the most serious problems affecting human beings.
The UN Sustainability goals also aim at achieving gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, and decent work and economic growth. For these goals to be achieved, managerial economists are needed to develop the right economic models. For instance, economic growth can be achieved if economic development models such as the Solow Model can be applied in decision making to allocate resources to the right sectors of the economy. This eighth sustainability goal indicates that managerial economics is applicable in developing solutions in national and international levels to create jobs and increase economic growth.
Generally, UN’s sustainable development goals affect managerial economics by imposing responsibility and duty on world leaders to manage the earth’s resources more efficiently to reduce income inequality and eliminate extreme poverty.