Search Results (23)

Achieving zero carbon emissions is crucial for mitigating climate change and meeting global targets. This study examines the economic and financial drivers of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions using a panel dataset of 141 developed and developing countries from 1990 to 2020. Employing the generalised method of moments (GMM), the findings indicate that industrial and manufactural activities remain the dominant source of CO₂ emissions, particularly in developed economies, while agriculture is a major contributor to N₂O emissions, especially in developing countries. While the service sector reduces both emissions, the effect is more pronounced for CO₂ than for N₂O. Urbanisation, trade openness, and natural resource rents also positively correlate with emissions. However, financial development presents a dual effect, offering the potential for emissions reduction through green financing. These insights underscore the need for targeted policies, including stricter industrial regulations, sustainable agricultural practices, green urban planning, and financial strategies that support low-carbon transitions. Full article

This study examines access to rental housing in the metropolitan area of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, linking it to socio-economic inequalities and the increasing precarization. In recent years, housing affordability has worsened due to rising rents, stagnant wages, and speculative dynamics—particularly those linked to tourism and platform-based economies. Drawing on official data from the State Reference System for Rental Housing Prices (SERPAVI) and income statistics at the census tract level, this research quantifies housing affordability and spatial disparities through indicators such as economic effort rates. The analysis identifies patterns of exclusion and urban fragmentation, showing that large sectors of the population—especially those earning the minimum age—face severe barriers to accessing adequate housing. The findings highlight the insufficiency of current public policies and propose the expansion of social rental housing and stricter rental market regulation as necessary steps to ensure fairer urban conditions. Full article

Countries worldwide are focusing on energy efficiency, economic sustainability, and responsible resource management to address climate change and meet sustainable development goals (SDGs). This study investigates how factors such as artificial intelligence, renewable energy, green human capital, geopolitical risk, natural resource rent, and information and communication technology influenced CO₂ emissions in 36 countries between 2000 and 2021. The study also explores how institutional quality moderates these relationships. We employed advanced econometric techniques to address this gap, including panel-correlated standard errors (PCSE) and the Driscoll–Kraay estimations (DKSE) models. A two-step system GMM approach was also used to strengthen the robustness of our findings. The findings reveal that green human capital, renewable energy consumption, and institutional quality can significantly reduce CO₂ emissions. Conversely, artificial intelligence, geopolitical risk, natural resource rent, and information communication technology contribute to increased CO₂ emissions. Institutional quality enhances the positive impact of green human capital and renewable energy on emission reduction. However, it has the opposite effect on artificial intelligence, leading to an even greater increase in CO₂ emissions. These findings underscore the importance of green policies in achieving sustainable development goals. We recommend that policymakers prioritize investing in clean energy and green human capital while strengthening institutional quality to effectively mitigate carbon emissions and meet SDGs. They also regulate AI and ICT carbon footprints and address geopolitical risks through energy diversification and international cooperation. Full article

This research investigates the effects of inclusive growth, environmental policy incentives, fintech innovations, and globalization on the environmental sustainability of G20 countries. In light of the growing global concern about carbon emissions from anthropogenic sources, which contribute to severe environmental degradation, the Paris Agreement aims to mitigate these impacts by controlling carbon emissions. This study explores how inclusive growth, fintech, and environmental policies interact to affect ecological footprints in G20 member countries, which represent some of the world’s most influential economies and policymakers. Specifically, inclusive growth is examined for its potential to reduce economic and social inequalities, which, if unmanaged, can exacerbate environmental degradation. In contrast, fintech is analyzed as a double-edged sword—its impact on sustainability depends on its influence on industries and economies, which may either exacerbate or alleviate environmental harm. Globalization’s role is scrutinized for its interactions with the economic, social, and ecological dimensions of sustainability. Our methodology employs advanced econometric models to analyze data from 1990 to 2023, focusing on the relationships between these variables and ecological footprints. Key findings suggest that while fintech can both increase and reduce environmental degradation depending on its application, environmental policy incentives are crucial for promoting sustainable practices and clean technology adoption. Inclusive growth can mitigate environmental harm by addressing inequalities, and globalization’s effects on sustainability depend largely on regulatory frameworks and corporate governance. This study contributes to the literature by highlighting the complex interactions between economic growth models, technological advancements, and environmental policies. Its originality lies in its comprehensive analysis of the G20 economies, shedding light on how inclusive growth, fintech, and environmental policies shape environmental outcomes. The research offers key policy implications, stressing the need for stringent environmental regulations, the promotion of green technologies, and the diversification of economies to reduce reliance on resource rents. The findings emphasize the importance of balancing economic development with environmental sustainability to achieve long-term ecological stability. Full article

The Dutch housing market comprises three sectors: social-rented, private-rented, and owner-occupied. The contemporary market is marked by a shortage of supply and a large subsidised social sector. Waiting lists for social housing are growing, whereas households with incomes above the limit do not or cannot leave the social sector. Government policy and market regulations change frequently, not least for political reasons. In view of commonly recognised problems in the housing market, this article considers the ‘internal demand’ of those households that are dissatisfied with their current residence. We examine the effects of regulatory policy by means of an exploratory agent-based simulation. The results provide perspectives on how internal demand is impacted by regulations in a housing market that is suffering from a shortage, and allow decision makers to weigh the pros and cons of policy measures. Full article

In 2012, China issued the “Green Credit Guidelines” policy to guide the green transformation of companies, and at the same time, the investment and financing behaviors of heavy polluters during the green transition have received widespread attention. In the view of the investment and financing maturity structure, we take China’s A-share listed enterprises from 2009 to 2021 assamples, and construct a difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the implication of the green credit policy on the short-term financing for long-term investment (SFLI) of heavy polluters. We found that: (1) green credit policy can reduce the level of SFLI of heavy polluters; (2) the size of short-term debt and the level of over-investment can play a mediating effect, and government subsidies can weaken the relationship between green credit policy and SFLI; (3) this effect is more significant when directors, supervisors, or senior executives have a financial institution background. (4) this effect is not significant in enterprises with bank-firm shareholding relationships and a stronger innovation intensity; (5) the effect is more significant in areas with stronger environmental regulations. This paper argues that heavily polluting enterprises should reduce short-term debt financing and over-investment, so, to solve the problem of investment and financing term mismatch under the credit risk; banks should prevent the credit rent-seeking problem caused by the equity association between banks and enterprises, and promote the consistency of green credit standards. The government can provide subsidies to enterprises in green transformation and strengthen the construction of regional environmental regulations in order to guide the smooth innovation and upgrading of heavy polluters. Our research expands the study of the micro-economic consequences of green credit policy, providing references for how to reduce maturity mismatch risk and guide the smooth transformation of heavy polluters from the multi-perspective of the government, banks, and enterprises, thus helping to promote companies’ smooth transit. Full article

Amid Australia’s surging house prices, rental housing has become the safety net for young adults experiencing housing stress. The attention of policymakers is drawn towards the build-to-rent (BTR) housing model, a growing housing option for many young Australian adults. Although BTR’s integration into Australia’s housing and planning landscape is unfolding, the perception of young adults is lacking in policy reforms for this growing industry. This study examines the perspectives of young adults aged 18 to 34 years on the critical success factors (CSFs) of the BTR housing provision in Australia. The responses are analysed using an explanatory factor analysis, relative importance index, and ANOVA. Our findings show a critically low awareness of BTR among young adults in Australia. Respondents, between 18 and 24 years, are most concerned with public awareness, an indication of their desire for transparency and engagement in decision making at the policy level. Young adults rank regulation and government policy interventions as the most important CSF of BTR housing. This shows that they are more concerned about the affordability of BTR houses. This study concludes that young adults’ viewpoints on BTR are important in ongoing policy reforms. There is a need to ensure that this asset class is accessible and affordable to this target group. Full article

New residential construction in many countries with rapid urban growth is often interrelated with smaller housing units being built. Sweden is not an exception. It is of interest to investigate the driving forces behind this tendency. Our presumption is that municipal land price policies and building permit regulations might play a certain role in this process. Contrary to previous studies that focus on the number of new dwelling units in housing construction, our purpose is to analyze the average size of new housing units and the factors that affect it on an aggregate level. We apply seemingly unrelated regressions for analysis of the average apartment size in new residential construction in the three largest metropolitan regions in Sweden as a function of the changes in population, apartment rent and prices, mortgage interest rates, land prices, and building permits per capita as a proxy for regulation. The unbalanced panel dataset includes the period between 1998 and 2017 and covers both the rental and the housing cooperative sectors. The analysis demonstrates that land prices and building policies along with market fundamentals are the underlying factors that affect the average size of an apartment in new residential construction in Sweden. Full article

Environmental degradation concerns are increasing worldwide. Moreover, in sub-Saharan African countries, these concerns are dominant because of an abundance of natural resources and exhaustion of these natural resources that tend to cause carbon emissions. This has created a huge interest among academics in investigating the relationship between natural resources, institutional quality, and environmental degradation. Since the sub-Saharan countries are resource-rich, the current study investigates how the natural resource rents and institutional quality impacted environmental degradation in selected sub-Saharan African countries from 1994 to 2020. Through employing the GMM estimation technique, the findings show that natural rents are positively linked with environmental degradation. This is closely related to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis, which stipulates that environmental degradation worsens at the initial stage of the economic development of developing countries. The study has also found that rules and regulations set by governments have not been implemented in a manner that reduces environmental degradation in the region. Worth noting is that the region should collaborate and design its environmental policies in line with the Sustainable Developmental Goals. This is the first step towards environmental sustainability. Full article

Under the situation of an increasing resource and environment shortage, the green transformation of dairy farming subject production driven by environmental regulation is the concentrated embodiment of a “promising government” to solve the problem of breeding environmental pollution. Due to the shortcomings of environmental regulation itself and the undefined connotation of the green transformation of dairy farming subject production, the interactive relationship between the two remains unclear at present. Based on defining the concept of green transformation of dairy farming subject production, this paper aims to analyze the interactive mechanism between the environmental regulation and green transformation of dairy farming main production, build a dynamic game model between the environmental regulators and dairy farming subject, and introduce the constraints and benefits of a reputation mechanism on the behavior in the model to explore whether environmental regulation can drive the green transformation of dairy farming subject production. The results showed that the green transformation of dairy farming subject production followed the “subject substitution view” and emphasized “source reduction, process control and terminal treatment”. Strictly designed environmental regulations could effectively drive the green transformation of dairy farming subject production, but it was inevitable that the environmental regulators were vulnerable to the rent-seeking behavior of dairy farming subjects, which was “regulation capture”. The introduction of the reputation mechanism has greatly improved the rent-seeking behavior of dairy farming subjects and the probability that environmental regulators have “regulation capture”, indirectly forcing dairy farming subjects to participate in the green transformation of production. The greater the punishment for dairy farming subjects who do not participate in the green transformation of production was, the more they can be forced to participate in the green transformation of production. At the same time, it also reduces the risk of damage to the credibility of the government. Based on the studies above, this paper also further discussed the shortcomings of environmental regulation itself, including the “re exit and light implementation” of the environmental regulation policy, “decentralization and light inspection” of the environmental regulation subject, “result and light process” of the environmental regulation mode, and “formal regulation and light informal regulation” of the environmental regulation form, which provides a scientific reference for the formulation of the environmental regulation policy of livestock and poultry breeding in the future. Compared with previous studies, this paper is innovative in two aspects: first, it defines the conceptual connotation of a green transformation of dairy farming subject production, and second, it systematically discusses the interaction mechanism between the environmental regulation and green transformation of dairy farming subject production. This paper provides a scientific reference for the development of future environmental regulation policies for livestock and poultry farming. Full article

Although its scale and social implications depend on the specific country or local situations, squatting is a global urban and rural phenomenon associated with such humanitarian issues as social justice, poverty and environmental impact, as well as economic issues, such as rent seeking by certain groups. It can be sporadic or massive. The state appears to deal with the former by implementing legal rules and the latter with social policies. With regard to the economic gains and costs of allowing squatting, it can be argued that squatter policies, which confer some entitlements on squatters, are akin to the doctrine of adverse possession in equity through recognising the benefits of long-term possession of land. Surveying and mapping as a key tool in the regulation of squatters in this context may or may not be carried out, contrary to common belief. This paper demonstrates, with documented real-world examples from Australia and China, that the state surveying of massive urban or rural squatting on government land is contingent on the benefits and costs of tolerating squatting. The discussion is related to the transfer of development rights (TDR) as a practicable inclusive policy in the context of a global drive towards land assembly for real estate development, which squatters often obstruct. Full article

In Portugal, due to the rental market’s inability to respond to the constant mismatch between supply and demand over the course of decades, things have become increasingly residual and dysfunctional within the scope of the homeownership market. Through analysis of various laws and legislative changes over the last century, as well as the participant observation acquired by the author’s two-and-a-half years of experience as a stakeholder in the sector, this paper aims to review rental policies in Portugal and the multiple impacts they have had on reproducing various weaknesses in the rental market. The paper concludes with some policy recommendations that advocate how government action is decisive in shaping housing and rental policy, establishing a legal and regulatory framework able to transmit credibility, stability and security to the contractual forms between supply and demand, in keeping with an effective right to housing through affordable renting. Full article

Protecting and improving cultivated land quality is a key way to the realization of agricultural modernization. The Chinese government advocates agricultural producers to implement cultivated land protection and quality improvement behavior (CLPQIB). However, the cultivated land management rights of family farms are not so stable. In order to study how stability of land management rights (SLMR) affects family farms’ CLQPIB, promoting family farms in adopting technologies to protect cultivated land, this study investigated 117 family farms in Anhui and Hubei provinces by stratified sampling and analyzed data through the logistic regression model and marginal effects model. The results showed that transferred land ratio, contract types, and contract duration affected family farms’ CLPQIB significantly. The probability of family farms applying organic fertilizer decreased by 0.9% for every 1% increase of the transferred land ratio. Family farms’ rented land through formal contracts have a 21.4% higher probability of adopting planting–breeding technology than family farms’ rented land through informal contracts. For every additional year of the rental contract duration, the possibility for family farms to replace chemical fertilizer with organic fertilizer, pesticides reduction, and integrated planting-breeding increase by 2.1%, 2.2%, and 1.3%, respectively. The results of this study can guide policy makers with further regulating land transfer behavior, guide family farms with signing formal lease contracts, and extending the duration of lease contracts, improving the cultivated land protection behavior of family farms. Full article

This paper provides a theoretical framework to explore how the support policies for renewable energies can promote rent-seeking incentives in private firms. We develop a political economy of rent-seeking that considers the link between the regulatory decisions of political agents and the potential scope of socially wasteful pursuits. We argue that systematic public support schemes bring rent-seeking as a perception shared by entrepreneurs that influencing political allocations of resources is an essential and potentially preferable source of private profit than other for-profit economic avenues. As evidence of our claims, the framework is applied to the case of Spain to illustrate the economic effects of support policies on the production and distribution of renewable energy. We find rent-seeking behavior in Spain’s renewable energy industry, and precisely that: (i) political regulations have induced market concentration and rent-seeking in renewable energy firms, (ii) these firms have required increasing regulations and premiums to survive, and (iii) energy consumers are forced to pay rent-seeking through increasingly expensive electricity bills. The analysis reveals some challenges and opportunities to drive efficient market-based policies to strengthen entrepreneurial competition and curb rent-seeking behavior. These insights have relevant proposals for the Spanish energy industry in complying with the EU Green Deal through a sustainable transition and comprehensive growth. Full article

Massive and rapid urbanization has led to population loss in rural areas, particularly in emerging and developing countries like China. As a result, houses in rural areas become vacant, and the house prices in cities, at the same time, skyrocket. While the research on the vacant farmhouses market (VFM) is a pressing issue for sustainable urbanization and has profound policy implications in China, few empirical studies have been conducted on analyzing the willingness of house owners and urban residents to participate in the VFM and any influencing factors—as there is no such operating market in China. To bridge the research gap, we first conducted a questionnaire-based survey on rural households and urban residents with a random sampling method in six cities in Sichuan Province, China. A total of 571 valid samples, including 284 rural households and 287 urban residents, were obtained. Based on these survey data, we then used logistic regression to estimate the influencing factors on the willingness of house owners and urban residents in renting in/out or selling/buying vacant farmhouses. The results showed that: (1) more than 60% of rural house owners and urban residents are willing to participate in a potential VFM; (2) the main influencing factors of house owners’ willingness to rent out or sell their houses include the sociodemographic characteristics of farmers (e.g., age, household income) and characteristics of the vacant houses (e.g., distance to the main roads, the status of vacant houses), while the major factors that affect the willingness of urban residents to rent in or purchase vacant rural houses are the sociodemographic characteristics of urban residents themselves (e.g., occupation), the status of the potential houses, and the perceived housing market; (3) most farmers want a regulated platform for the vacant farmhouses; urban residents pay more attention to the good natural environment in rural areas and the infrastructure and public service levels of vacant farmhouses in rural areas. This study thus showed the necessity, feasibility, and potential challenges and barriers involved in establishing a VFM in China. Full article