Search Results (102)

This study examines the impact of insurance market development on Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and economic growth in the European Union (EU-15) and Central and Eastern European (CEE-11) countries over the period 1996–2022. Long-run relationships are analysed using panel cointegration tests and Mean Group (MG), Pooled Mean Group (PMG), and Dynamic Fixed Effects (DFE) estimators. At the same time, causal links are assessed through the Granger non-causality test. Results show that in EU-15 countries, insurance development positively affects both environmental quality via reduced CO₂ emissions (elasticities between 0.2078 and 0.2860), and economic growth (0.109–0.829). In CEE-11 countries, a positive effect on growth (0.102–0.205) is confirmed, but no significant environmental impact is observed. The findings highlight the need for policies that support green insurance initiatives and investments in low-carbon transition projects, especially in the CEE-11 region. Full article

After the powerful socioeconomic shock of the fall of the communist regime in the early 90s, the ten countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) analyzed in this study became growing Member States of the European Union (EU). However, they faced the 2008 financial crisis, the 2019 COVID shock, and sharp income disparities both at the regional level and compared to the countries in Western EU. This study explores the differences in sustainable regional development, modeling with Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) to analyze relationships across multiple cross-sections in the short and long run, as well as with Cointegration Tests and Granger Panel Causality to detect evidence of causality among the variables in the study. The analysis covers 2012–2022, a period in which the Member States from CEE had the best access to generous structural and cohesion EU funds and that includes both the post-financial crisis convergence phase and the COVID-19 shock, enabling us to capture regional resilience dynamics. The results indicate that capital formation and population density positively influence disposable household income in the long run, across CEE regions, while unemployment and life expectancy exert negative effects. The results of this paper can be of use to decision-making institutions seeking to implement proactive socioeconomic policies in the lagging regions, before the next crisis, focused on capital investments, reducing unemployment, and bridging the rural–urban divide. The study contributes to the literature on inclusive and sustainable economic development at the CEE regional level. Full article

The objective of this study is to investigate how responsible AI governance mechanisms influence value creation and sustainability in Saudi banks over the period 2015–2024. Using a panel dataset from listed Saudi banks and combining ESG disclosure metrics with financial indicators, we investigate whether AI adoption and AI-related disclosures enhance banks’ market and accounting performance while strengthening sustainability outcomes. We apply robust panel regressions, control for bank-specific characteristics, and run sensitivity checks to address endogeneity and measurement concerns. The empirical findings indicate that higher levels of AI adoption are positively and significantly associated with both value creation and sustainability performance. Furthermore, Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel Granger causality tests confirm a unidirectional causal relationship from AI adoption to both financial and sustainability outcomes. Overall, the results suggest that responsible AI integration may enhance sustainable value creation in the Saudi banking sector. Full article

This study aims to examine the fundamental determinants of economic growth in G20 countries in the context of institutional structure, innovation, and education. The significance of the research lies in revealing that sustainable economic growth is shaped not only by traditional macroeconomic factors but also by the effectiveness of institutions, innovation capacity, and human capital investments. The existing literature contains limited studies that comprehensively address the interactions between these three variables and economic growth, specifically in G20 countries. The study applies panel data analysis to G20 countries for the period 2005–2024 and performs panel Granger causality analysis using fixed and random effects models after horizontal section dependence, unit root, and cointegration tests. Empirical findings show that institutions, innovation, and education variables have significant and positive effects on economic growth. Granger causality test results reveal that these variables unidirectionally drive growth, while growth has no feedback effect on these factors. The findings indicate that strengthening institutional reforms, encouraging R&D and innovation investments, and increasing human capital capacity are critical for sustainable and high-quality economic growth for policymakers. Full article

This study investigates the relationship between economic growth and environmental performance in selected Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries through the lens of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Due to data availability constraints, our sample includes Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Mauritius, Morocco, and Oman, covering the period 1990–2022. Using annual panel data, we apply panel cointegration techniques alongside Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) estimators, complemented by Granger causality tests, to examine the interaction among GDP per capita, renewable energy consumption, and transport service exports in determining CO₂ emissions per unit of GDP. The empirical findings provide only partial support for the EKC: while the DOLS results confirm an inverted U-shaped income–emissions relationship, the FMOLS estimations contradict it, suggesting a more complex and nonlinear pattern. Beyond testing the EKC, this study contributes two novel dimensions to the literature. First, it shows that renewable energy exerts a statistically significant negative effect on carbon intensity in the long run, despite weak short-run causality, highlighting the delayed but durable environmental benefits of clean energy adoption. Second, it introduces transport service exports as a proxy for structural economic transformation, capturing the role of trade-driven diversification in reducing emissions. By embedding renewable energy deployment and service-based trade dynamics into the EKC framework, the study advances a more policy-relevant and region-specific understanding of the growth–environment nexus in the selected MENA economies. The results underscore the importance of scaling renewable energy, promoting low-carbon service sectors, and aligning trade and environmental policies to ensure that economic growth supports long-term climate objectives. Full article

South Asia faces the dual challenge of sustaining rapid economic growth while managing severe ecological pressures. This study explores the relationship between Ecological Footprint (EF), Financial Development (FD), Economic Growth (GDP), Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and Political Stability (PS) in SAARC countries from 2000 to 2020. Using a Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR) combined with a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), the analysis captures both short-run dynamics and long-run equilibrium relationships, addressing endogeneity among variables. Results reveal that EF negatively correlates with FD, GDP, and FDI, while showing a positive association with PS. Cointegration tests using dynamic and fully modified ordinary least squares confirm long-term relationships between the variables. Impulse response functions illustrate how shocks to one variable affect others over time, highlighting complex interactions. Granger causality tests suggest limited short-term causal links, reflecting the multifaceted nature of these relationships. This research is particularly relevant as SAARC countries face the dual challenge of sustaining rapid economic growth while mitigating ecological pressures. The study advances the literature by explicitly integrating political stability into the environmental–economic nexus, a factor often overlooked in earlier regional analyses. By providing empirical evidence on the joint role of economic, financial, and political drivers of ecological sustainability, the paper contributes both to academic debate and to the design of more balanced policy frameworks for sustainable development in South Asia. Full article

This study investigates the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) adoption and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance among 100 listed Saudi Arabian firms over the period 2015–2024. Drawing on panel data regression techniques, including fixed effects models with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, pooled OLS with industry and year controls, and dynamic panel estimations using system GMM, the analysis reveals a significant and positive association between AI implementation and overall ESG scores. Disaggregated analysis shows that AI adoption is particularly associated with improvements in the environmental and social dimensions, with a more moderate relationship to governance practices. To address potential issues of cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity, the study applies the Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (CCEMG) and Mean Group (MG) estimators as robustness checks, which confirm the consistency of the main findings. In addition, the Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel Granger causality test indicates that AI adoption Granger-causes ESG performance—especially in the environmental and social dimensions—while no reverse causality is observed. The results suggest that AI technologies are positively linked to firms’ sustainability strategies and performance, supporting the integration of digital transformation into national and corporate ESG agendas, particularly in emerging markets like Saudi Arabia. Full article

Concerns about ensuring a sustainable environment are growing, attracting major attention from policy professionals worldwide. Therefore, this study investigates the nonlinear impacts of fiscal consolidation on CO₂ emissions in 17 OECD countries from 1978 to 2020. To probe the short- and long-term connections across various quantiles of CO₂ emissions, we adopted panel QARDL frameworks. The Granger non-causality test was used to investigate the variables’ association with CO₂ emission. The study’s main findings confirm the overall beneficial effect of fiscal consolidation on carbon emissions. It reduces CO₂ emissions at almost all quantiles in the short run. By contrast, in the long run, the effect is positive at lower quantiles and turns negative at upper quantiles. Furthermore, a causality analysis identified a bidirectional causal relationship between fiscal consolidation and CO₂ emissions, confirming the existence of mutual influence. While Keynesian theory links fiscal consolidation to economic recession, our findings support the non-Keynesian view, showing that such policy can foster economic growth and thereby contribute to reducing CO₂ emissions in the short run. Thus, OECD countries are orienting public spending and carbon taxation toward environmentally friendly practices while ensuring environmental protection and deficit reduction. Nonetheless, the identified mixed effect in the long run highlights the need for sustained consolidation policies by enhancing expenditure efficiency and adopting targeted taxation measures to achieve lasting emission reductions and support the transition to cleaner energy, even when emissions are relatively low. Full article

Middle-income economies contribute significantly to global CO₂ emissions as they pursue economic development, creating an urgent need to understand emission drivers. This article investigates the impact of renewable energy use, financial development, and industrialization on CO₂ emissions in 71 middle-income countries (32 upper-middle income, 39 lower-middle income) between 2002 and 2020. We used the advanced Generalized Method of Moments Panel Vector Autoregression (GMM-PVAR) approach to address endogeneity and reveal complex relationships among the variables. Our findings revealed that renewable energy utilization had no substantial influence on emissions reduction in either upper- or lower-middle-income countries, challenging conventional policy assumptions. Financial development consistently reduces emissions across both income groups (−0.08% and −0.06%, respectively). Industrialization has heterogeneous effects, increasing emissions by 2.03 percent in upper-middle-income countries and with no effect in lower-middle-income countries. Granger causality tests illustrated a bidirectional relationship connecting CO₂ emissions and financial development, whereas no causal link was found between CO₂ emissions and renewable energy use. These findings prove the importance of coordinated policies that strengthen financial systems and sustainable industrial practices. Full article

The study investigates the contribution of technology (TECH), quantified by Internet penetration, in influencing tourism performance (TP) among the top ten touristic nations in Europe: France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, Austria, Portugal, and the Netherlands. Using panel data from 2000–2022, the study includes additional structural controls like environment quality, gross domestic production (GDP) per capita, exchange rate (ER), and safety index (SI). The Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) is employed to capture heterogeneous effects at different levels of TP, and Driscoll–Kraay standard error (DKSE) correction is employed to make the analysis robust against autocorrelation as well as cross-sectional dependence. Spectral–Granger causality tests are also conducted to check short- and long-run dynamics in the relationships. Empirical results are that TECH and SI are important in TP at all quantiles, but with stronger effects for lower-performing countries. Environmental quality (EQ) and GDP per capita (GDPPC) exert increasing impacts at upper quantiles, suggesting their importance in sustaining high-level tourism economies. ER effects are limited and primarily short-term. The findings highlight the need for integrated digital, environmental, and economic policies to achieve sustainable tourism development. The paper contributes to tourism research by providing a comprehensive, frequency-sensitive, and distributional analysis of macroeconomic determinants of tourism in highly developed European tourist destinations. Full article

Economic policy uncertainty is an important macroeconomic risk factor that can have direct effects on investment decisions, growth dynamics, and public finance. In particular, its potential impact on tax revenue is critical in terms of fiscal sustainability. This study investigates the Granger-causal relationship between economic policy uncertainty, total tax revenue, and economic growth in G7 economies over the 1997–2021 period, applying symmetric and asymmetric panel causality tests. The empirical findings revealed evidence of causality between economic policy uncertainty and tax revenue and between economic growth and economic policy uncertainty. In asymmetric analyses where the effects of positive and negative shocks were separated, the direction of causal relationships differed between countries. These results imply that asymmetric effects vary by country. Overall, the empirical findings suggest that enhancing transparency and predictability in tax systems could play a vital role in reducing economic policy uncertainty and thus positively affect tax revenue performance and fiscal resilience. Full article

The investment–saving relationship has been the subject of much debate. On the one hand, there is the conventional mainstream neoclassical school of thought that advocates for the idea that saving determines investment. On the other hand, heterodox economists (mainly in the post-Keynesian/structuralist tradition) posit an inverse relationship between these variables. This article empirically investigates the direction of causality in order to contribute to the existing literature on the topic. To this end, two Granger panel tests are applied to a dataset of 106 countries over the period from 1980 to 2023. The econometric techniques used are effective in accounting for both cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity in the data. In summary, our findings align with the theoretical models that posit bidirectional causality as the most probable explanation of the mechanism driving investment and saving. More specifically, they are consistent with post-Keynesian (demand-led) assumptions describing an open economy operating below its maximum potential growth rate within a current account solvency constraint. Full article

This paper investigates the impact of global EPU and China’s EPU on China’s FDI inflows, examining whether financial development and political stability moderate these relationships. Using panel data from 212 countries spanning 2009 to 2022, we first establish causal direction through Granger causality tests, then employ instrumental variable estimation to address endogeneity concerns, while conducting heterogeneity analysis across development levels and Belt and Road Initiative participation. We find that both global and domestic EPU significantly reduce China’s FDI inflows, with a 1% increase in China’s EPU leading to a 0.083% decrease in FDI inflows. However, political stability and financial development serve as effective moderators, reducing EPU’s negative impact by up to 60% and 70%, respectively. The effects vary substantially across investor countries: non-developed countries show ten times stronger sensitivity to EPU than developed countries, while Belt and Road Initiative countries demonstrate 86% lower sensitivity than non-BRI countries. This research advances EPU–FDI theory by demonstrating how institutional quality creates “policy buffers” against uncertainty and provides policymakers with evidence that strengthening political stability and financial development can maintain investor confidence during uncertain periods, while strategic international partnerships can insulate investment flows from policy volatility. Full article

This study explores the relationship between renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, economic growth (EG), and ecological footprint (EF) in Poland’s top 18 energy-importing countries from 2000 to 2022. While the energy-growth-environment nexus is well-studied, limited attention has been paid to how a single major energy-exporting country influences sustainability in its trade partners, a gap this study aims to fill. A panel dataset was constructed using five key variables: real GDP per capita, Poland’s fuel exports, ecological footprint per capita, renewable energy consumption, and primary energy consumption per capita. Methodologically, the study employs panel cointegration techniques, including FMOL and DOLS estimators for long-run analysis, as well as the VECM and Granger causality tests for the short run. The study’s main contribution lies in its novel focus on Poland’s export influence and the application of advanced econometric models to examine long-run and short-run effects. Results indicate a stable long-run cointegration relationship. Specifically, a 1% increase in renewable energy use is associated with a 0.0219% rise in GDP per capita. Additionally, Poland’s fuel exports and ecological footprint positively impact growth, whereas primary energy use is statistically insignificant. These findings offer practical implications for policymakers in Poland and its trading partners aiming to align energy trade with sustainability goals. Full article

The Export-Led Growth Hypothesis (ELGH) posits that expanding exports drive long-run economic growth. While this has held true for several Asian economies, its effectiveness across African regional blocs remains underexplored. This study investigates the validity of ELGH in the East African Community (EAC) and Southern African Development Community (SADC), assessing whether exports significantly contribute to economic growth in these regions. The analysis covers 22 EAC and SADC economies from 1990 to 2022—regions marked by structural transformation efforts, trade liberalisation, and participation in the AfCFTA. A dynamic panel data model based on an augmented Cobb-Douglas production function is estimated using the System Generalised Method of Moments (System GMM) to address endogeneity and reverse causality. Granger causality tests supplement the analysis. Exports and technology significantly enhance GDP growth, while labour and FDI are statistically insignificant. Trade openness negatively affects growth, suggesting vulnerability to external shocks. A bidirectional Granger causality exists between exports and GDP. This study offers the first dynamic, bloc-level empirical evaluation of ELGH across EAC and SADC, incorporating trade-related interactions. Findings affirm ELGH’s relevance and stress the need for export diversification, technological upgrading, and institutional reform for sustained growth in Africa. Full article