Search Results (7,239)

Background: Whether financial deepening and trade integration support or hinder environmental sustainability in hydrocarbon-dependent economies remains contested. Methods: This study examines the relationships among financial inclusion, energy intensity, trade openness, and CO₂ emissions per capita in Saudi Arabia for 1980–2020. The empirical strategy combines ARDL bounds testing, FMOLS, DOLS, CCR robustness, Toda–Yamamoto causality, and a battery of structural-break tests comprising Zivot–Andrews unit-root tests, Bai–Perron sup-F tests, and Chow tests. To address the mechanical correlation between carbon productivity and GDP, the per capita emissions specification (LNCP) is used as the primary outcome; carbon productivity (LNES) is reported for robustness. The small-sample sub-period results are stress-tested using ridge regression, residual-bootstrap confidence intervals, a GDP-augmented (scale-control) specification, and a break-date sensitivity analysis. Results: Cointegration is established. The Chow test identifies a significant break in the cointegrating relationship at 2001 (F = 7.36, p < 0.001 for LNCP), supported by the Zivot–Andrews endogenous-break dates for the financial-inclusion series (2000) and trade-openness series (2005), and by the Bai–Perron sup-F test (sup-F = 26.37 at 1990, exceeding the 1% Andrews critical value). Sub-sample re-estimation around 2001 shows that energy intensity, urbanisation, and trade openness are robust drivers of per capita emissions only after the break, while financial inclusion is statistically insignificant in both regimes once the GDP–carbon-productivity mechanical relationship is removed. Conclusions: The Saudi finance–environment relationship is structurally unstable, and policy assessments based on full-sample averages can be misleading. The evidence is best read as describing regime-dependent, conditional long-run associations rather than as identifying structural causal effects. By exposing the interactions, synergies, and trade-offs among financial deepening (SDG 8), energy efficiency (SDG 7), sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12), and climate action (SDG 13), the study shows how this descriptive quantitative evidence can inform—rather than directly identify—an instrument-level policy discussion. The findings are consistent with a Vision 2030 mix that prioritises energy efficiency and green-finance reform, with implications for SDG Targets 7.3, 8.10, 12.2, and 13.2 across oil-exporting economies. Full article

This study examines how climate change interacts with social, ecological, and policy factors to shape food security among Indigenous tribal communities in Jharkhand, focusing on Saraikela Kharsawan district. It combines a scoping review, policy analysis, and a climate–agriculture case study of Saraikela Kharsawan to identify vulnerabilities and pathways for more resilient Indigenous food systems. The research is qualitative, using a scoping review of 28 studies on Indigenous food security and climate impacts in Jharkhand, thematic analysis of nine national and state policies, and a district-level case study using land use, climate trends/projections, and crop statistics for Saraikela Kharsawan. Additionally, findings from participant observation were integrated into how tribal communities in Saraikela Kharsawan experience and respond to climate variability and its implications for local food systems and nutrition. The study identifies a nutrition paradox, where Indigenous communities experience micronutrient deficiencies and anaemia despite rich biodiversity and Indigenous knowledge. This is accompanied by a decrease in the consumption of nutrient-dense Indigenous foods and a predominance of rainfed monoculture rice cultivation. Marked by rising temperatures and erratic rainfall, climate variability is destabilising agroforestry systems, narrowing dietary options and reducing adaptive capacity. Additionally, policy and institutional gaps reveal fragmented support—strong rights laws and calorie-focused welfare schemes but weak integration of Indigenous foods, agroforestry, and traditional ecological knowledge into nutrition and climate programmes. The paper argues that climate change acts as a threat multiplier on already fragile Indigenous food systems and calls for nutrition-sensitive safety nets, community-based agroforestry, gender-inclusive Indigenous knowledge governance, and cross-sectoral policy alignment to support resilient, culturally appropriate food systems in Jharkhand. Full article

This study analyzes the relationship between functional digital access and knowledge-economy practices among young Ecuadorian adults, with emphasis on their implications for sustainable digital inclusion and knowledge-based development. The study is based on the premise that access to the Internet, devices, and technological tools does not necessarily ensure critical, productive, collaborative, or knowledge-generating uses of information. A quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional, and descriptive-correlational design was applied to a non-probabilistic sample of 441 young Ecuadorian adults aged 18 to 30. Data were collected through an online self-reported questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, KMO and Bartlett indicators, confirmatory factor analysis, the Mann–Whitney U test, effect sizes, and Spearman’s rho with 95% confidence intervals. The instrument showed very high internal consistency for knowledge-economy practices ($\alpha =0.978$; $\omega =0.978$) and functional digital access and technological resources ($\alpha =0.963$; $\omega =0.964$). The CFA supported the proposed three-factor structure of knowledge-economy practices more strongly than a one-factor model, although the high reliability coefficients also suggest possible item homogeneity. The results showed that functional digital access was perceived more favorably than knowledge-economy practices. A very strong, positive, and statistically significant association was found between functional digital access and knowledge-economy practices ($\rho =0.822$, 95% CI [0.765, 0.870], $p<0.001$). Information management and collaboration was the dimension most strongly associated with functional digital access ($\rho =0.820$, 95% CI [0.764, 0.868], $p<0.001$). Women reported higher scores than men in knowledge-economy practices, although the effect size was small ($r=0.158$; $r_{rb}=0.184$). These findings suggest that functional digital access is a necessary but insufficient condition for sustainable digital inclusion. The study contributes empirical evidence from a developing-country context and highlights the need for educational and public-policy strategies that transform connectivity into critical learning, collaboration, innovation, employability, and knowledge creation. Full article

The classical monetary trilemma implies a binding trade-off among exchange rate stability, capital mobility, and monetary autonomy. Yet, emerging market economies increasingly operate hybrid policy configurations that depart systematically from the trilemma’s corner solutions. This paper proposes a continuous, time-varying measure of such departures—the Hybridity of Regime Index (HRI)—extracted via a dynamic factor model from sub-indices capturing exchange rate hybridity, capital account segmentation, and effective monetary autonomy for a balanced panel of thirty emerging markets over the period 2005–2024. The analysis yields four principal findings. First, a secular increase in average regime hybridity is observed, with a marked acceleration following the financial fragmentation shocks of 2022. Second, moderate hybridity is associated with attenuated output and inflation volatility, and local projections show that high-HRI economies experience milder output contractions in the immediate aftermath of global financial shocks. Third, panel threshold regressions identify an endogenous HRI level beyond which the stabilizing effect reverses: further hybridity amplifies macroeconomic volatility and erodes reserve adequacy. Fourth, the post-2022 geopolitical fragmentation of the international monetary system has amplified the pre-existing trend toward hybridity, with sanction-affected economies exhibiting discontinuous jumps in HRI that push them into the high-vulnerability regime. This paper characterizes this non-linear pattern as a resilience–vulnerability nexus and discusses its implications for early warning indicators and for the assessment of policy responses to the fragmentation of the international monetary system. Full article

Brunei Darussalam has undergone a rapid demographic and epidemiological transition characterized by declining fertility, increased life expectancy, and a shift from infectious diseases to chronic non-communicable conditions. While these transitions are well described at the population level, their implications for family support systems are less explored. This study synthesizes national data to examine how changes in population structure and disease burden are reshaping caregiving and intergenerational support. Findings highlight shrinking family size, increasing dependency, and growing care complexity. Applying the welfare diamond framework, the analysis shows that these transitions are progressively shifting care responsibilities beyond the traditional family towards greater roles for the state, market and community sectors. These findings suggest that Brunei Darussalam is undergoing an emerging care transition that has important implications for long-term care policy. Full article

The increasing frequency, intensity, and spatial extent of wildfires across Europe require a paradigm shift from reactive fire suppression toward integrated wildfire risk management grounded in scientific evidence and adaptive governance. This article examines how scientific risk assessment methodologies and policy instruments can be effectively aligned across European, regional, national, and local governance levels. The study develops a multilevel comparative analytical framework linking technical risk assessment tools with strategic policy objectives for fire-adapted societies. Particular attention is paid to vertical policy coherence (from EU to local level), horizontal coordination among sectors, and the integration of spatial risk modelling into planning, prevention, and climate adaptation strategies. The article contributes to the field of wildfire risk management by proposing a structured multilevel integration model that connects scientific assessment, ecosystem-based management, and adaptive policy instruments, offering practical implications for strengthening resilience in European forest landscapes under accelerating climate change. Full article

AI-based internet of things (IoT) systems increasingly require upstream decision-making mechanisms to identify emerging technologies that may shape future sensing–memory–communication–computation capabilities (SMCC). However, early technology signals are often weak, fragmented, and distributed across heterogeneous sources with different reliability levels, making reliable capability planning difficult. This paper proposes AgentProphet, a source-aware multi-agent framework for emerging AI technology forecasting in AI-based IoT systems. AgentProphet integrates evidence from papers, patents, policy documents, and reports into a unified concept space, and combines role-specialized agent reasoning, source-aware confidence calibration, and critic-guided refinement to generate target-year technology rankings. In the main balanced weak-signal forecasting task, AgentProphet achieves a Growth-Aware NDCG@10 of $0.410\pm 0.076$, improving over GRU, DirectLLM, DLinear, and ARIMA by 58.3%, 91.6%, 108.1%, and 314.1%, respectively. It also obtains the highest E-Gain@10 of $0.305\pm 0.060$, E-MAP@10 of $0.056\pm 0.008$, and NDCG@10 of $0.474\pm 0.039$. Cross-task robustness analysis shows that DirectLLM remains competitive, and can be stronger in sparser or more mature signal regimes. A qualitative case study maps the forecasted capability directions to representative SMCC concerns as a data-level interpretation of possible planning implications. These findings suggest that AgentProphet is most suitable for balanced weak-signal settings where early evidence is available but incomplete, rather than serving as a universally superior emerging technology forecaster. Full article

This comprehensive meta-analysis reviews 45 studies published from 2000 to 2024 that use quantitative methods to examine how educational poverty—limited resources, poor-quality teaching, and disadvantaged school settings—affects students’ academic outcomes. Following PRISMA guidelines, effect sizes were calculated using random-effects models to account for variability across studies. Educational poverty was associated with a moderate, significant negative impact on achievement (Hedges’ g = −0.45, 95% CI: −0.50 to −0.40); this likely reflects a performance gap of about 10–15% between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students. Variability across studies led to subgroup and meta-regression analyses. The negative effects were more pronounced for primary students (g = −0.50) than secondary students, especially in high-inequality regions like North America (g = −0.55), and were largest for cognitive outcomes such as standardized test scores (g = −0.50), compared to non-cognitive metrics like attendance and graduation. Meta-regression showed that location, age group, and outcome type significantly affected effect sizes. Sensitivity tests and bias assessments confirmed consistent results. Overall, the studies highlight that educational poverty remains a major barrier to academic success, with the strongest effects seen early in education. These findings underscore the importance of early, targeted, and context-specific policies to reduce inequalities and improve learning conditions for underprivileged students. Full article

This study investigates the dynamic interactions between Bitcoin, global financial indicators, and the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) index within a VAR-based econometric framework, addressing a notable gap in the literature on emerging and shallow financial markets. While prior research predominantly focuses on developed economies, evidence suggests that cryptocurrency–stock market linkages are time-varying, crisis-sensitive, and often asymmetric. In this context, the present study examines both short-term causality structures and shock transmission mechanisms among KASE, Bitcoin (BTC), oil prices, the U.S. dollar index (DXY), and the VIX using monthly data for the period 2017M01–2026M04. Empirical findings indicate that, despite the absence of statistically significant Granger causality from individual global variables to KASE, the joint dynamics suggest a non-negligible, albeit indirect, interaction structure. Variance decomposition and impulse-response analyses further reveal that KASE dynamics are predominantly driven by its own shocks, reflecting the relatively segmented and internally driven nature of the market. Diagnostic tests confirm the robustness of the model, with no evidence of serial correlation or heteroskedasticity in residuals. These findings are consistent with the structural characteristics of the Kazakh financial system, including limited market depth, lower investor participation, and high sensitivity to domestic macroeconomic conditions. Unlike developed markets where stronger integration is observed, KASE appears only weakly connected to global financial and cryptocurrency markets. The study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence from a frontier market and highlights the importance of considering country-specific structural factors when evaluating financial integration. Policy implications emphasize the need to enhance market depth, transparency, and investor confidence to strengthen the responsiveness of KASE to global financial developments. Full article

Pandemic response requires not only epidemiological control but also the allocation of limited social resources across competing uses. This paper develops an integrated economic–epidemiological framework to examine how resources should be allocated among goods production, preventive intervention, and therapeutic intervention during an infectious disease outbreak. Building on the susceptible–infected–recovered (SIR) model, the analysis treats the infection rate and the recovery rate as policy-sensitive variables shaped by preventive and therapeutic resource allocation. The objective is intentionally parsimonious and focuses on output preservation and resource allocation under epidemic constraints; infections affect the economy indirectly by reducing effective labor input and output. Two epidemiological environments are considered: one with permanent immunity after recovery and another with possible reinfection. The results reveal a robust timing pattern across both environments. Preventive allocation tends to peak before the surge in infections, whereas therapeutic allocation tends to move more closely with the infection trajectory. The analysis also makes explicit the opportunity cost of intervention: allocating more resources to prevention or treatment reduces the resources available for goods production. Phase-diagram representations clarify the mechanism behind this timing distinction, and sensitivity analyses over alternative curvature parameters confirm that the qualitative ordering of the peaks is robust. These findings suggest that the effectiveness of pandemic response depends not only on the total amount of intervention resources, but also on their timing and functional allocation. By linking epidemic dynamics, resource scarcity, and policy timing within a unified optimization framework, the paper contributes to economic–epidemiological modeling and offers implications for pandemic preparedness, health-system resilience, and the design of response strategies for future infectious disease emergencies. Full article

Microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs) have become pervasive environmental contaminants, raising growing concern regarding their potential accumulation within the human body and associated health risks. MP particles can translocate into systemic circulation and multiple organs, necessitating a comprehensive evaluation of current human biomonitoring data. This comprehensive review aimed to synthesize current evidence on the occurrence, distribution, detection technologies, exposure reduction and potential health implications of microplastics in human biological samples. The reviewed literature confirms the presence of microplastics in blood, placenta, amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood, breast milk, semen, urine, and selected tissues including cardiovascular, renal, and reproductive samples. Detection frequencies in some matrices exceeded 70–90%, with polymer types such as polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, and polyethylene terephthalate most commonly identified. Reported particle sizes ranged from nanometer-scale fragments to particles over 100 µm, indicating both systemic circulation and potential tissue retention. Spectroscopic techniques such as μFTIR and μRaman dominate polymer identification, while thermoanalytical approaches such as Py-GC/MS provide quantitative polymer confirmation. Emerging evidence suggests associations with oxidative stress, inflammatory responses, endothelial dysfunction, and impaired reproductive parameters, although causal relationships remain uncertain due to methodological heterogeneity and limited longitudinal data. This review provides an integrated overview of current human exposure evidence, identifies analytical gaps, and highlights the urgent need for harmonized detection frameworks and longitudinal risk assessment studies to inform public health policy and future biomonitoring strategies. Full article

Climate change politics has been largely analyzed through the lenses of a liberal international order. This is the most favorable approach, because liberalism contains a powerful universalistic strand, defends the rights of people, and engages in multilateral negotiations and agreements, which are important to deal with a global issue that requires intra- and intergenerational solidarity. Yet despite robust scientific consensus and decades of international multilateral agreements under the United Nations, global greenhouse-gas atmospheric concentrations continue to increase, and high fossil-fuel dependence persists. One may say that without those negotiations, the situation would be worse, but humanity is increasingly distant from complying with the objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change (UNFCCC). The present work addresses climate change politics under liberal and neorealist international orders and follows the Mearsheimer hypothesis of a transition from a unipolar liberal order to a bipolar neorealistic bounded orders dominated by the US and China. The effect of international orders on sustainability and, more specifically, on climate change politics is analyzed with a methodology based on three structural determinants: (1) the world evolution of climate change variables; (2) primary-energy sources and critical minerals, and (3) climate change responses—mitigation, adaptation and climate geoengineering. The distinct energy and climate policies of the US and China are discussed using these structural determinants. US climate change policy appears to be less driven by climate observation, science and the severity of harmful impacts of climate change than by the vested interests of the fossil-fuel industry. It is argued that solar radiation manipulation (SRM) is a technological fix involving negative side-effects, uncertainties, risks and geopolitical implications, while lacking an agreed international governance framework. Potential deployment is more likely under a neorealistic international order, although it adds further uncertainty and risks without solving the climate change challenge. Full article

Announcements of major transport infrastructure can reorganize land markets long before construction begins, as expectations are capitalized into prices and building decisions—with direct implications for sustainable territorial planning. This study examines the real estate response to the 2024 announcement of the Torquemada airport project in the Valparaíso Region, Chile. We assemble a high-resolution microterritorial panel at the block–semester–land-use level, integrating three Chilean administrative registers: the SII cadastre (over 100 million construction lines across 16 semestral snapshots, 2018–2025), the F2890 conveyance records (1.49 million geolocated transactions), and the daily Unidad de Fomento series. We estimate a multi-outcome spatial difference-in-differences design, complemented by an event study, land-use heterogeneity analysis, local indicators of spatial association, placebo tests, spatial-weight sensitivity analysis, and the heterogeneity-robust Callaway–Sant’Anna estimator. We find a robust increase in new-parcel construction in the zone of influence—identified by an annual event study against never-treated controls whose pre-announcement coefficients are small and trendless, in sharp contrast to the uniformly positive pre-trends of the expansion and aggregate-stock series—together with selective appreciation of non-residential uses and no detectable effect on housing value. The expansion and aggregate-stock components are not separately identified: their pre-announcement trends are strongly non-parallel, so the corresponding fixed-effects coefficients are read as design-conditional associations. The evidence supports an activation of the extensive margin (new-parcel building) rather than a recomposition away from densification. We read the evidence as the anticipatory footprint of the announcement rather than a point causal effect. Detecting this footprint before construction enables anticipatory value capture and sprawl-containment policy while the planning window remains open. Full article

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI, hereafter) as a determinant of economic growth has received significant attention in both the theoretical and empirical research literature due to its numerous benefits. However, the FDI–growth relationship is rarely researched for the economy of Saudi Arabia. Amid this backdrop in the literature, this paper focuses on Saudi Arabia to provide fresh, comprehensive evidence about the FDI–growth relationship. Our analysis is based on time series data for the period 1975–2023, which were collected from credible global sources. For estimation, the study adopted ARDL modeling, which is suitable for time series data as it produces both long-run relationships and short-run dynamics simultaneously. Our results show that FDI inflows have a positive and statistically significant influence on economic growth in the long run. Similarly, in the long run, both human capital and trade openness have also improved the long-run growth of Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, a positive and statistically significant influence of natural resources on economic growth is observed in the long run. Moreover, the results show that total factor productivity and domestic investment have not had the desirable influences on economic growth. The short-run results show that the growth performance of Saudi Arabia could be explained by natural resources, domestic investment and human capital. The causality analysis also confirmed a one-way relationship running from FDI inflows towards economic growth. Our results have a significant policy implication for the policymakers of Saudi Arabia. Full article

Cross-border e-commerce increases the demand for maritime logistics and creates new environmental governance challenges. This study examines how platform environmental responsibility and green incentives influence sustainable governance in cross-border maritime logistics. A multi-actor Stackelberg decision model involving a regulatory authority, a platform, and merchants is developed for three logistics modes. Using industry-informed normalized parameter settings and a feasibility-screened constrained-equilibrium procedure, the analysis compares platform green governance effort, merchant green participation, modeled residual environmental loss, welfare, and profit outcomes. In the documented baseline scenarios, stronger platform responsibility increases platform governance effort, whereas merchant participation and platform profit decline. The welfare response is conditional on the feasible parameter region and must be assessed jointly with responsibility-related cost. Green incentives increase both platform and merchant efforts in the modeled scenarios. These results are comparative model implications under documented parameter assumptions rather than direct empirical estimates of emissions, costs, or policy effects for a particular platform or route. Full article