Job description

Result of Service
1- Deliverable 1: A high-dimensional analytical matrix capturing structural proximity and relatedness across the production universe, serving as an interactive-visual network diagnostic asset to identify diversification-linked financing opportunities and associated exposure to illicit financial flow risks. 2- Deliverable 2: Apply data-driven models to prioritize products and sectors based on national capability structures. The deliverable will include a technical note identifying strategically linked products, feasible diversification pathways, financing opportunities, and potential finance entry points, while applying rigorous filters to exclude spurious, non-productive, or phantom investment-driven linkages. 3- Deliverable 3: A diagnostic report identifying high-potential product pathways while highlighting sectors structurally vulnerable to illicit financial flows. 4- Deliverable 4: A Python-based Inter-sectoral Structural Coefficients framework that transforms raw bilateral investment statistics into a standardized long-panel dataset for gravity-model analysis and detection of disguised flows. 5- Deliverable 5: A sector and product clustering matrix-based industries and products with similar production structures, supplier dependencies, and capability requirements. 6- Deliverable 6: Excel file and summary report assessing cluster-level production values, priority manufacturing ecosystems, high-value product groups, and opportunities for industrial upgrading and investment targeting. 7- Deliverable 7: Revised summary report incorporating FfD comments. 8- Deliverable 8: An econometric modeling framework to assess structural feasibility, upgrading potential, and capability spillovers across interconnected products and sectors. 9- Deliverable 9: Revised output (deliverable 7) incorporating FfD comments 10- Deliverable 10: Excel file and summary report assessing and synthesizing the outputs of the econometric models. 11- Other deliverables related to the tasks mentioned above as requested by the Hiring Manager including, but not limited to, graphs, charts, briefings, excel files, tables, etc.
Work Location
Remote
Expected duration
8 months
Duties and Responsibilities
Background ESCWA supports Arab countries in strengthening national and regional financing systems to accelerate progress toward the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. Through an integrated approach that combines policy dialogue, analytical research, capacity-building, and digital innovation, ESCWA assists member States in mobilizing and managing financing across key sources, including domestic public resources, private investment, international development cooperation, trade and investment flows, and sustainable debt management. This work is aligned with global commitments, including the Seville Commitment, which underscores the importance of strengthening accountability and governance in financing development, as well as the mandates to address financing leakages as a key enabler of financing sustainable development. (paragraphs 29 (a) & (c), 28 (e), and 33 (a)). Central to this work is the conduct of detailed diagnostics of the financing for development landscape, analysing the various sources of financing available to address five major financing rifts that continue to impede sustainable development in the Arab region: financing insolvencies, financing inequalities, fiscal space constraints, funding shortfalls, and debt-financing overhangs. In response, ESCWA advances regional cooperation on domestic resource mobilization, integrated financing solutions, diversifying sources of revenues and addressing leakages related to illicit financial flows and investment distortions. These efforts are complemented by policy recommendations and practical tools to support governments in improving revenue mobilization and financing strategies. In parallel, ESCWA has developed a forward-looking digital financing ecosystem composed of analytical and AI-powered tools that enable governments assess financing gaps, improve spending efficiency, optimize public spending, address illicit financial flows, strengthen multiple aspects of their financing strategies, enhance policy targeting, accelerate progress towards the SDGs, and design integrated financing strategies aligned with national development priorities. This ecosystem has received recognition at multiple institutional levels and has been endorsed under the Seville Platform of Action and recognized by DESA as a scalable, real-life application that can be adapted and replicated across countries and regions. Within this context, ESCWA seeks a consultant to provide support in the implementation of various FfD activities as detailed below. Duties and Responsibilities 1- Map productive linkages across pilot country/countries’ production base and financing structure to identify sectoral interdependencies, financing bottlenecks, and opportunities for higher-value economic transformation. 2- Estimate latent financing-space linkages by combining prospective structural configurations, visualization tools, and empirical signals of capability-space adjacency to identify feasible pathways for economic diversification and financing mobilization for blended finance while addressing resource leakages. 3- Construct and align a high-dimensional proximity matrix across the production universe, integrating relevant product, sectoral, industrial, and financing classification systems to enable comparable mapping of productive and financing linkages, identify tax- and trade-based leakage channels, and detect unrealized or suboptimally realized productive potential. 4- Normalize and validate the matrix to ensure connectivity, consistency, and suitability for modelling and network diagnostics. 5- Develop a structural scoring framework to assess relative feasibility, productive accessibility, and strategic positioning of diversified commodity-linked financing opportunities, while identifying products and sectors exposed to illicit financial flow risks. 6- Design and implement a Python-based analytical framework to query, harmonize, and transform relevant investment datasets into a standardized panel, supporting downstream empirical analysis and the identification of potential anomalies in investment patterns. 7- Apply data-driven analytical methods to identify patterns, groupings and relationships across sectors and products based on selected structural and operational characteristics. 8- Integrate Product-level production indicators to assess economic trends, identify priority areas, and highlight sector-focused policy support. 9- Develop and apply econometric models to assess structural feasibility, between proximate products across inter-connected products and sectors. This includes: o Preparing panel dataset of products’ competitiveness and production indicators. o Integrating structural linkage and proximity matrices into the modelling framework. o Estimating econometric models to analyse the evolution of production and structural upgrading patterns. o Assessing productive feasibility and upgrading opportunities, across interconnected sectors and products. 10- Generate and assess alternative upgrading pathways based on econometric modelling results. 11- Other related tasks related to the deliverables below as requested by the Hiring Manager.
Qualifications/special skills
A master’s degree or equivalent in economics, finance, econometrics, business analytics, or related field is required. A first-level university degree in combination with qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree. All candidates must submit a copy of the required educational degree. Incomplete applications will not be reviewed. A minimum of 1.5 years of professional work experience in analyzing macro-financing and industrial policy issues, particularly data-driven, microfinancing and econometric modeling, is required. One year of previous work experience in research, data analytics, and data analysis is required. One year of experience in research, data extraction or using statistical tools is required. Knowledge of STATA statistical package to process and analyze data is required. Knowledge of Python, machine learning techniques is required. Good knowledge of econometrics is desirable.
Languages
English and French are the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat; and Arabic is a working language of ESCWA. For this position, fluency in both English and Arabic languages are required. Note: “Fluency” equals a rating of ‘fluent’ in all four areas (speak, read, write, and understand) and “Knowledge of” equals a rating of ‘confident’ in two of the four areas.
Additional Information
Not available.
No Fee
THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.