Sustainable Global Economic Convergence
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Sustainable Global Economic Convergence introduces Sustainable Convergence, a multidimensional development framework that integrates economic convergence, sustainable development, and resilience into a single analytical model. Developed by Hunter Hughes, Founder of H Heuristics, the concept proposes that emerging and developing economies can narrow economic, technological, institutional, and human-development gaps with advanced economies while simultaneously advancing environmental sustainability and resilience to interconnected global risks. Rather than measuring progress solely through income growth, the framework evaluates convergence across five interdependent dimensions: economic and productive capacity, technological capability, human development, institutional strength, and environmental and resilience performance. The report synthesizes insights from eight academic traditions, including convergence theory, endogenous growth theory, development economics, ecological economics, innovation diffusion, and resilience theory, and operationalizes them through a five-stage development mechanism and the Sustainable Convergence Measurement Framework (SCMF). Analysis of global development trends since 2000 suggests that while significant progress has occurred in income, connectivity, and access to essential services, much of this convergence has followed carbon-intensive pathways and remains highly uneven across regions and dimensions. Technology gaps emerge as the most common constraint on balanced development, while environmental and resilience challenges increasingly shape long-term outcomes.The report argues that technological diffusion, clean energy, digital public infrastructure, human capital investments, and institutional development create opportunities for developing economies to pursue alternative pathways that achieve prosperity without replicating the environmental costs of earlier industrialization. Within the broader H Heuristics research architecture, Sustainable Convergence functions as a proactive pathway toward Polycrisis Resilience by reducing exposure to interconnected environmental, economic, technological, and societal risks. The report concludes that the defining development challenge of the twenty-first century is not only the speed of convergence, but the route through which it occurs, and proposes a research agenda centered on measuring and testing whether multidimensional, sustainable convergence can deliver lasting prosperity, environmental quality, and systemic resilience simultaneously.
Source: Figshare
Author: Hunter Hughes
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225802894
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