Quantifying the effect of administrative approval reforms on SO2 emissions: a quasi-experiment in Chinese cities.

The effects of the Administrative Examination and Approval System Reform on economic growth and entry of businesses have drawn much attention. However, few scholars pay attention to the impacts of this policy on SO2 emissions. Keeping in view the existing research gap, a spatial difference-in-difference (SDID) model is employed to assess the effects of the Administrative Examination and Approval System Reform on SO2 emissions in 297 Chinese cities during the period 1995-2020 from the perspective of spatial spillover effects. The results show that the establishment of Administrative Examination and Approval Center (AEAC) has significantly positive effects on the local SO2 emissions. The significant indirect (spatial spillover) effects are confirmed. That is, the establishment of AEAC of a given city has a significant positive impact on the SO2 emissions of neighboring cities. The findings are confirmed by several robustness tests. Our study findings have significant implications for the cross-border coordination of environmental policies that aim to improve the quality of the environment across borders.

CO2 emissions, income inequality, and country risk: some international evidence.

This research explores the effects of income inequality and country risk on CO2 emissions and examines whether the effects change across countries with different development stages or income levels. A new panel quantile regression approach is used to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the impacts of affecting factors on CO2 emissions at various quantiles, while addressing econometric challenges such as endogeneity and heterogeneity. From a global perspective, we can conclude that the marginal impact of inequality on emissions drops constantly with decreasing country risk at 10th to 50th quantiles, which even performs negative, whereas at the other quantiles, the marginal impact of inequality always remains negative. When we focus on the different income groups, the nexus of inequality emissions is negative first and then positive with decrease of country risk in low-income countries but shows no significant in low-middle- and upper-middle-income countries. Additionally, we validate the detrimental impact of income inequality in upper-income countries. Besides, country risk adversely moderates the nexus of inequality and emissions in low- and upper-income countries. Empirical results confirm that the nexus of inequality emissions lies in country risk, income level, and existing emission degree. These findings provide some important recommendations for policy-makers.

Income inequality and CO2 emissions in belt and road initiative countries: the role of democracy.

This paper investigates the interaction effects of income inequality and democracy on CO2 emissions. The spatial panel model, which accounts for the spatial spillover effects across countries, is used. Using the panel data covering 41 Belt and Road initiative countries, the results indicate significant positive spatial spillovers effect to country-level CO2 emission activity. The Kuznets Curve hypothesis, which assumes that reverse U relation presents between income and CO2 emissions, is identified. Empirical results provide evidence that democracy levels promote the nonlinear nexus between income inequality and CO2 emissions. High levels of inequality, ceteris paribus, in conjunction with poor democratic institutions are likely to result in higher pollution. The findings are robust to various robustness tests.

Heterogeneous effects of oil shocks on exchange rates: evidence from a quantile regression approach.

The determinants of exchange rates have attracted considerable attention among researchers over the past several decades. Most studies, however, ignore the possibility that the impact of oil shocks on exchange rates could vary across the exchange rate returns distribution. We employ a quantile regression approach to address this issue. Our results indicate that the effect of oil shocks on exchange rates is heterogeneous across quantiles. A large US depreciation or appreciation tends to heighten the effects of oil shocks on exchange rate returns. Positive oil demand shocks lead to appreciation pressures in oil-exporting countries and this result is robust across lower and upper return distributions. These results offer rich and useful information for investors and decision-makers.