Economic Change and Restructuring最新文献

This paper investigates the impact of financial openness on financial sector development and income inequality. We use two approaches to capture financial openness for a panel dataset of 52 African countries from 1980–2019 and find that: (1) Principle-based financial openness policy negatively affects financial sector development and widens income inequality. In contrast, the outcome-based measures positively affect banking sector development and narrow income inequality. (2) Capital inflow to African countries is not merely pulled a vibrant macroeconomic fundamental. Only schooling and governance factors facilitate the impact of financial openness on financial sector development. (3) Adverse non-policy factors play an insignificant role in moderating the impact of financial openness. This implies that the impact of financial openness on financial sector development and income inequality is weak in countries experiencing a banking crisis or passing through a lengthy conflict. Our finding is consistent with the institutional quality theory, which claims robust institutions are needed. We underline that countries should take caution in implementing principle-based reforms. Particularly, there is an alternative policy path for African countries to optimize the benefit by pursuing outcome-based financial openness measures.

Abstract

The majority of the Next Eleven nations are yet to undergo the renewable energy transition in full swing. Rather, over time, these nations have become even more reliant on fossil fuels. As a result, establishing environmental sustainability is a matter of deep concern for these emerging nations. Against this backdrop, this study assesses the macroeconomic determinants of their annual carbon dioxide emission growth rates considering the period from 1991 to 2020. In a nutshell, the results from the econometric exercises affirm that undergoing renewable energy transition does not inhibit the emission growth rates of the Next Eleven nations unless sound policies are executed for promoting better democratic governance, in tandem. In this regard, improving the state of democratic governance is witnessed to act as a mediating factor between renewable energy transition and lower carbon dioxide emission growth rates. Besides, verifying the pollution haven hypothesis, incoming receipts of foreign direct investment are observed to boost the emission growth figures while liberalizing international trade barriers is found to be ineffective in influencing carbon emission growth rates. Lastly, a complementary relationship between population growth and carbon emission growth rates is affirmed by the results. Hence, considering these above mentioned findings, a set of policies is recommended for enabling the Next Eleven nations to achieve environmental sustainability in due course.

This study investigates the dynamic impacts of urbanization (UR), energy transition (REC), economic growth (ECOG), and energy transition (INT) on carbon footprint (CFP). Employing a robust panel dataset, we observed intricate relationships between these variables and CFP. Different quantiles showed different, nonlinear effects of UR on CFP, according to our quantile study. It is interesting to note that from the 50th quantile on, there was a negative influence, and from the 10th quantile on, there was a positive effect. A strong causal relationship between REC and carbon footprint (CFP) was shown using panel causality analysis. These results provide important light on the complex interactions between financial, environmental, and economic issues and how they affect carbon footprint. These discoveries may play a significant role in developing policies that support sustainable urbanization and increase economic resilience during recessions. The analysis outlines how the major stakeholders' policies would be affected.

Over the last several decades, environmental sustainability along with social as well as economic growth has been given key importance due to the pressure it imposes on an economy. Therefore, to achieve these three goals together, the world now advances toward attaining sustainable development agenda signed in 2015. The objective of this study is to scrutinize the impact of structural transformation (STR) on socioeconomic and environmental progress captured by sustainable development (SDI) for a global sample of 122 countries. We consider the period from 2000 to 2019 and employ two-step system GMM methodology to take endogeneity into account which might exist between STR and SDI. In line with the literature of economic growth and STR, we include other variables such as corruption, population growth, government consumption and investment. The results from the two-step system GMM suggest that STR positively affects socioeconomic and environmental progress. We also consider the countries according to World Bank income classifications and K means clustering based on the value of STR. For low, upper middle-income and high-income sample, we find that STR positively affects socioeconomic and environmental progress, while it has no significant impact on such progress for lower middle-income category. Having stable structural transformation benefits the economy, society and environment, while unstable structural transformation is not beneficial. Based on the results, policy directions are suggested for the full sample as well as for the subsamples in order to achieve sustainability in all the sectors.

Efficient environmental resource management is a major problem for countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in sustainable development (SD). This article determines the effects of BRI policy and institutional factors (corruption control, rule of law, and political stability) on sustainable development in 103 BRI countries between 2007 and 2019. We use across high-income, upper-middle-income, lower-middle-income, and low-income (LI) countries. The main findings indicate that BRI and institutional variables like the rule of law, political stability, and corruption control are critical in boosting SD. The interacting effect between BRI and institutional factors can improve SD. Overall, the findings show that the BRI and combined performance of institutional quality indicators are lower in LI countries as compared to other income countries. Trade openness and human capital positively affect SD across the panel and all income groups. Our analyses imply two major policy implications: legislative assistance in the form of institutional enforcement is essential to establish effective and productive natural resource management policies, and when creating environmental resource protection policy from the aspect of environmental governance, various institutional structures should be examined.

This study employs the CS-ARDL estimator to model the adoption of renewable energy within BRICS nations spanning the period from 1995 to 2021. The key findings reveal that a 1% increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) has a negative impact on green consumption, with approximately a 0.21% decline in the short-term and a 0.48% decrease in the long-term. Furthermore, a 1% increase in GDP leads to a reduction of 0.04% in short-term and 0.12% in long-term green consumption. On a positive note, an augmentation in environmental tax revenues exerts a favorable influence on green consumption, with an increase of about 0.17% in the short-term and 0.20% in the long-term. The presence of a larger green financial market significantly accelerates green consumption. Policy implications encompass strategies such as attracting green FDI, financing environmentally friendly projects, developing digital green financial markets, and expanding trade networks for green utilities with other nations.

In the recent past, geopolitical tension has taken center stage in defining macroeconomic dynamics. Given that, this study examines the impact of geopolitical risk on economic growth for 41 countries from 2000 to 2020. Our panel estimations using the feasible generalized least square (FGLS) technique show that geopolitical risk positively and significantly impacts economic growth. The results are consistent even after addressing endogeneity concerns using system GMM and auto-correlated explanatory growth variables using the PCSE estimation. Our results indicate that a percent increase in geopolitical risk increases economic growth to 3.3%. For the cohort of advanced and emerging economies, our result shows that the advanced economies can better mitigate any geopolitical shocks and experience favorable growth rates. On the other hand, emerging economies posit a detrimental impact of geopolitical risk on their economic growth, thereby indicating an asymmetric effect between the two sets of economies. Further, macroeconomic conditions and institutional factors play a significant role in determining the impact of geopolitical risk on the economic growth of 41 countries. In the presence of institutional factors like democracy and economic freedom, the relationship between geopolitical risk and economic growth remains intact. In the context of geopolitical risk, these institutional factors stimulate economic growth.

Abstract

Using panel data between 2012 and 2020, this research examines the relationship between the flows of low-skilled immigrants and innovation in the EU-15 group of nations and Switzerland. The empirical component is generated from a theoretical model that we construct. After addressing the potential endogeneity of the share of immigrants in the population, we find that regions with a relatively high immigrant population have a favorable impact on the generation of patent applications, whereas low-skilled immigrants have the reverse effects on innovation. Hence, the results are in line with the proposition in the theoretical section that lower-educated immigrants determine social decreasing returns in the economy.

The authors have employed several techniques to account for model uncertainty in the inequality-growth model. However, the BMA technique is the most prominent approach that solves model uncertainty in the inequality-growth literature. This study applied a recent BMA analysis using panel data to examine the role of fiscal policy on income inequality in 37 OECD countries from 2000 to 2015. Fiscal policy (in terms of tax revenue increase) serves as a redistributive tool or instrument to transfer income from higher income earners to lower earners and is considered a mechanism for income equality. To the best of the author’s knowledge, only a few empirical growth studies have considered fiscal policy impact in their income inequality model setup. Our work contributes to very little research on the fiscal policy–income nexus using a novel BMA and MCMC regression as a robust methodology. Our empirical evidence on the role of fiscal policy on income inequality has found three variables, namely, economic growth, fiscal policy, and urban population, to impact income inequality significantly. We also found that the countries are conditionally neither converging nor diverging because of the probability of their coefficient being high at 100%. As expected, the coefficient of fiscal policy has a significant negative relationship with income inequality, indicating that fiscal policy reduces income inequality significantly by an average of 22% (with 100% certainty) for both BMA and Bayes models in OECD countries.

There is inadequate knowledge about the relationship between financial openness and economic transformation, particularly in the African context. This lack of knowledge fuels the passion for research, especially with the emergence of new refined indicators of both financial openness and economic transformation. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to assess the impact of financial openness on the economic transformation process using as sample sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, with study period spanning from 1995 to 2020. To do so, we use the economic complexity index as an indicator of economic transformation, and the KAOPEN index of Chinn and Ito (2006) to capture financial openness. Based on the Instrumental Variables Two-Stage Least Squares (IV-2SLS) technique, we obtain the following results: Firstly, financial openness is a powerful driver of economic transformation in SSA; secondly, our results remain stable following several sensitivity tests related to economic digitization, financial development, types of natural resources, quality of institutions, historical, cultural, and geographic factors; and finally, our results are robust to the use of alternative measures of financial openness and economic transformation, but also to changes in instrumentation and estimation technique. Consistent with our result, we suggest that policymakers should boost the attractiveness for foreign direct and portfolio investments while maintaining fundamental balances.