Thailand 4.0 Readiness

This paper presents a situation analysis for a development policy called Thailand 4.0. Thailand 4.0 aims to achieve economic prosperity, social well-being, human values and environmental protection. Two research questions are presented. Firstly, does Thailand have characteristics of a developed economy? To answer this question, we use the 10-Factors Test of developed economy. Secondly, does Thailand have sustainable economy? We tested 20 factors of ADB’s standards for sustainability. Macroeconomic data from annual reports of ADB, WEF and IMF were used. Thailand scores U = 0.29 ± 0.08 or has 29% of the developed economy characteristics using Kahnman-Tvertsky prospect theory. The test for sustainability looked at improving and deteriorating factors. Improving factors include: participation prior to primary school, proportion women in parliament, GDP growth of employed persons, commercial banks, mobile phone coverage, household income, GDP growth, value added to GDP, investment, and fiscal balance. Deteriorating factors include: Gini coefficient, global poverty, national poverty, maternal mortality, infant mortality, traffic death, and external debt. Among the ASEAN group, Thailand showed one significant indicator. Within ASEAN, Thailand shows no significant improvement. According to the 10 characteristics of the First World Economy, Thailand scores 0.295 or achieved 29.5% probability of the expected value or succeeded 57.84% in achieving FWE status. According to the ADB’s partial indicators for sustainable economy, Thailand still has not met the standard.JEL Code: B12, B13, C10, F6