New insights on immigration, fiscal policy and unemployment rate in EU countries - A quantile regression approach.

Free movement of production factors in the enlarged EU has led to immigration flows from East to West and from South to North with a significant impact on EU labor markets. Fiscal federalism also determined large immigration flows into EU area and affected unemployment rate in the EU countries. The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of factors such as number of immigrants, tax on profits, social contributions, economic growth and population growth on unemployment rates in EU area using a panel quantile regression and an PMG-ARDL approach as robustness test during 1991-2020. The results show a positive association between population growth and unemployment rate, whereas the remaining exogenous factors are negatively associated with unemployment rate. Still, social contributions are statistically significant only for upper quantiles. The overall impact of social contribution on unemployment rate is positive as per PMG-ARDL estimations. We have also demonstrated that the immigrant flows impact on unemployment rate is very weak. The factors that are exerting the most significance influence on unemployment rate, are economic and population growth, followed by tax on profits. Findings support policy recommendation in EU area in terms of fiscal policy.

Reshaping energy horizon of Iran: investigating economic sanctions, export diversification, and environmental resilience.

Employing robust methodologies, including principal component analysis, autoregressive moving average, Fourier bootstrap dynamic autoregressive distributed lag, error correction model, and the Breitung-Candelon spectral Granger causality test, this study scrutinizes the impact of export diversification (EXD) on Iran's ecological footprint (EF) from 1997 to 2020, considering economic sanctions (ESI), trade openness (TOP), energy consumption per capita (ECpc), globalization (KOF), and real GDP per capita (RGDPpc). Findings consistently affirm a positive environmental impact of EXD, revealing a nuanced temporal pattern. Notably, the short-term impact (- 0.645) is more pronounced than its long-term counterpart (- .020). Increased industrial activities due to globalization (10% rise) lead to 4.26% and 1.64% EF degradation in the long and short term. Conversely, due to Iran's heavy reliance on fossil fuels, a 10% rise in ECpc correlates with 1.63% and 3.81% long- and short-term environmental quality reduction. ESI demonstrates a dual impact, improving short-term environmental quality but contributing to long-term degradation. Frequency-domain causality analysis highlights EXD and KOF as short- and long-term causes of EF, ESI, and TOP as medium- to long-term causes and RGDPpc as a long-term cause. These findings emphasize the need for sustainable policies, stringent environmental standards, and a balanced approach to fostering economic growth while preserving the environment.