Exploring the moderating effect of globalization, financial development and environmental degradation nexus: a roadmap to sustainable development.

Financial development is a multidimensional process that contributes to economic growth but sometimes it has a devastating effect on climate change. No country can achieve sustainable development goals without caring the environmental quality. The present study investigates the moderating role of globalization (KOF) in determining the financial development (FD) on environmental degradation in the SAARC countries from 1990 to 2020. The long-run coefficients are estimated using the panel quantile regression (PQR) approach at lower, middle and upper quantile groups. The study shows the U-shaped relationship across three quantile groups based on financial development and carbon emissions. The moderator globalization (KOF) brings up the change in the turning point and flattens before the maturity of the U-shaped curve at the middle quantile while flattens after the maturity of the U-shaped curve at the upper quantile. The study recommends that by using energy-efficient technologies, better financial sector interaction with globalization enhances the environmental quality in SAARC countries.

Assessing the environmental sustainability gap in G20 economies: The roles of economic growth, energy mix, foreign direct investment, and population.

There is serious debate among researchers regarding the sustainability implications of economic prosperity and energy dependence. Energy consumption has a critical linkage with economic growth, but it also degrades environmental quality. Therefore, it is important to investigate the relationship between economic growth, the energy mix, and environmental sustainability. However, empirical literature utilizes narrow variables to capture environmental sustainability. Because of this, this research introduces a new environmental sustainability variable using entropy weighting and combining deforestation, household carbon emissions, and life expectancy. This study examines the relationship between environmental sustainability, economic growth, and other selected variables using data from 2002 to 2019 for the G20 and its high-, upper-, and low-middle-income member countries. Since shocks in one G20 country can affect another, this study uses the Augmented Mean Group (AMG) technique for empirical analysis. The results of this study indicate that Gross Domestic Product (EG) and its square term did not support the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) theory. The energy mix has a positive impact on the environmental sustainability gap across all the samples except for the upper-middle-income group. Foreign direct investment positively affects this gap, while population growth has no significant impact. These findings demonstrate that policymakers should support environmentally friendly and clean energy sources to foster long-term economic growth and sustainability.

Analyzing the impact of access to electricity and biomass energy consumption on infant mortality rate: a global perspective.

Conserving the lives of newborns has been a long-standing issue around the world, where 2.4 million babies die in the first month of the life. The literature indicates that the important challenges of social development goals around the globe include affordable and easy access to electricity, promotion of sustainable economic development, and provision of better social services and creation of job opportunities which help in reducing infant mortality rate. This calls for the need to probe into this matter minutely and brings up the ways for reducing the infant mortality rate. The present study is an attempt to analyze the impact of rural and urban electrification and biomass energy consumption on infant mortality rate for the period 1990-2020 using the Panel Quantile Regression (PQR) approach. The results of the study show that in both developed and developing countries, biomass energy consumption has positive impact on infant mortality rate, while rural and urban electrification has proposed the inverted U-shaped relationship with infant mortality in different quantile groups. It is also concluded that few developing countries are failed to achieve the maturity of the inverted U-shaped curve while all developed countries have achieved at the maturity stage. This study recommended that for reducing the infant mortality rate, the world should discourage the use of biomass energy and promote the affordable and easy access to electricity on priority basis.

Revisiting the environmental impact of financial development on economic growth and carbon emissions: evidence from South Asian economies.

It is a global challenge to achieve sustainable economic growth by improving the environment. The present study discussed the role of the financial development sector in achieving sustainable economic growth and environmental quality in South Asian countries from 1990 to 2020 by controlling labour force participation, globalization, industrialization, and the education sector. A feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) panel data econometric technique has been used to check the relationship among the variables. The results show that financial development has a U-shaped relationship with carbon emissions and economic growth. Furthermore, labour force participation, industrialization, globalization, and educational school enrolment significantly increase CO2 and economic growth. This study suggests that the governments of South Asian countries should take steps to increase economic growth. For this purpose, effective supervisory mechanisms of financial development through financial innovation, improving financial efficiency, maintaining financial stability, and reducing the environmental pollution.

Moderation of Services' EKC through Transportation Competitiveness: PQR Model in Global Prospective.

The continuously increasing GHG emissions have created environmental pollution and several challenges to ecosystems and biodiversity. The challenges of climate change are multipronged, resulting in melting glaciers, flash floods, and severe heat waves. In this regard, the adaptive and mitigation strategies to manage the consequences of climate change are highly important. The transport sector creates a quarter of carbon emissions, and this share is continuously increasing. Accordingly, this research study uses transport competitiveness to determine carbon emissions of the transport sector for 121 countries covering the time period from 2008 to 2018. The Panel Quantile Regression (PQR) technique is engaged to analyze the study results. The findings highlight that transport competitiveness tends to increase carbon emissions of the transport sector across quantile groups 1 and 3, while it reduces carbon emissions in quantile group 2. The U-shaped services' EKC is validated in quantile groups 2 and 4. The moderation engaged, i.e., transportation competitiveness, changes the turning point of the services' EKC across quantile groups 2 and 4. However, in the high-CO2 quantile group, the moderation impact of transport competitiveness is strongest as it reduces the sensitivity by flattening the services' EKC. Furthermore, the planned expansion of the population and improved institutional quality tend to mitigate carbon emissions across different quantile groups. The policy relevance/implications that are based on the study results/findings are made part of the research paper.

Socio-economic determinants of subjective wellbeing toward Sustainable Development Goals: An insight from a developing country.

One of the goals of happiness research is to identify the key factors that influence it. Therefore, the present research is designed to examine the determining factors of subjective wellbeing (SWB) in Pakistan. The present research is conducted by collecting the data of 1,566 households in Punjab, Pakistan, using the ordered logit and tobit model. The findings of this research confirm that income, education, government effectiveness, no perceived corruption, and perceived institutional quality improve wellbeing, while lower trust in family and friends, poor health status, living on rent, and dissatisfaction with the services of hospitals lower the level of wellbeing. But individuals with more social ties, who face barriers in health services, live more happily satisfied with their lives. Crime victimization and worrisome terrorism also lower the level of SWB. Findings of research strongly emphasize policymakers and government institutions to improve their quality and take essential measures for improving the governance structure.

A technological innovation and economic progress enhancement: an assessment of sustainable economic and environmental management.

This study examines the role of technological innovation and economic progress on environmental pollution by using STRIPAT and EKC theoretical frameworks in 25 developing Asian countries from the period 1998 to 2019. For technological advancement, the energy intensity has been used to gauge how much of the quantity of energy is employed to produce the additional unit of gross domestic product at domestic level. Therefore, the volume of the energy used in the production process is highly important as it is documented through the energy intensity. To capture the impact of innovation, the sum of total patent applications and trademark applications for the sampled countries has been used. This study applied second-generation unit root and panel cointegration techniques to estimate the results. To estimate the long-run relationship of variables and the cross-sectional interdependence, Pedroni Residual and Westerlund Cointegration tests are applied. Further, the Hausman-Taylor-type test has been used to check the efficiency of the pool mean group (PMG). The results of PMG regression confirm the existence of EKC in the developing Asian countries. The results of this study showed that technological development, innovations, and economic progress have the potential to reduce carbon emission and to protect the environment in developing Asian economies. Moreover, the results of error correction model indicate that in case of any external shock, this model will converge towards equilibrium within 64.6 years. The study proposed that a policy framework related to technological innovations should be sustained and the advancement of human capital and research and development should be the primary focus of the developing nations to mitigate the environmental challenges.

Economic growth, fiscal imbalance, and environmental sustainability: What is desirable and undesirable for developing economies?

Developing economies are suffering to fulfill the sustainable environment's commitments in fiscal imbalance. This study attempted to highlight the core issue of fiscal imbalance in developing economies and its impact on a sustainable environment. For this purpose, the study utilized generalized least squares (GLS) and quantile autoregressive distributive lag (QARDL) on a 19-year dataset (2000-2018) of the South Asian region. The results of GLS indicate that fiscal imbalance contributing positively to South Asia's environmental degradation process. Here, energy consumption (due to dirty sources of energy) and energy intensity (due to inefficient energy conversion technology) are also sources of environmental degradation in this region. The results of QARDL confirm that economic and political fluctuations can be the long-run source of fiscal imbalance in this region, which ultimately slows down the process of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) theory and contributes positively to environmental degradation. Based on the empirical analysis, this study provides a comprehensive set of policy guidance for developing and developed economies for the smooth transition of sustainable environmental conditions in South Asia.