Mineral resources and equitable economic development: South Asian mineral resources policy perspective with innovation for resources efficiency

In the contemporary era, economies are heavily relying on minerals extraction, where the literature offers ambiguous evidence regarding minerals-growth nexus. To solve the puzzle, this research inspects the empirical association between mineral resources and economic prosperity in the South Asian nations from 1988 to 2022. This study also scrutinizes the importance of financial development, remittances, renewable energy use, and technological innovation. The research utilizes a panel dataset and applies the normality, stationarity, and cointegration tests. The results validates non-normal data distribution, stationarity of variables, and existence of long-run equilibrium association between them. To tackle non-normality and structural break issues, panel quantile regression and structural break ordinary least squares (OLS), are used. The study's results emphasize that mineral rents and remittances harm economic growth, indicating the poor outcomes associated with excessive dependence on external sources income. On the other hand, the factors identified as key drivers of sustainable economic expansion include financial progress, the use of green energy, and technical innovation. The results are tested for robustness via dynamic OLS, fully modified OLS, and canonical cointegration regression. This research recommends the significance of diversified revenue sources, fostering financial expansion, and making investments in renewable energy systems. To create more equitable growth, policymakers must focus on improved R&D and financial inclusion.