COVID-19 pandemic and financial market volatility: A quantile regression approach.

The study examined the nexus between the COVID-19 pandemic and the market volatility of the global markets. For this purpose, a 30-country sample was used based on the most COVID-19 cases and deaths during the study period, from January 1 to December 12, 2020. We employed panel quantile regression and Panel Estimated Generalized Least Square (Panel-EGLS) frameworks to analyze the influence of COVID-19 on volatility in the whole sample and subsamples of emerging and developed markets. Our results of Panel-EGLS showed that the new cases and deaths positively impact volatility in the naïve and control models. The results from quantile regression also illustrated that new deaths and cases have positively influenced market volatility at the 50th and 75th quantiles. From the subsamples, our results demonstrate almost similar signs and significance for the impact of COVID-19 on market volatility in developed and emerging markets in both the naïve and control models. Both the results illustrate that any increase in COVID-19 positively caused volatility in the whole and subsamples at the mean and upper quantile levels. Our results necessitate coordinated global government actions to stabilize markets, mitigate volatility's impact by proactive policies in future health crises, and underscore a monetary policy for stability.

Forecasting oil, coal, and natural gas prices in the pre-and post-COVID scenarios: Contextual evidence from India using time series forecasting tools.

Stock market price prediction is considered a critically important issue for designing future investments and consumption plans. Besides, given the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely impacted stock markets worldwide, especially over the past two years, investment decisions have become more challenging for risky. Hence, we propose a two-phase framework for forecasting prices of oil, coal, and natural gas in India, both for pre-and post-COVID-19 scenarios. Notably, the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average, Simple Exponential Smoothing, and K- Nearest Neighbor approaches are utilized for analyses using data from January 2020 to May 2022. Besides, the various outcomes from the analytical exercises are matched with root mean squared error and mean absolute and percentage errors. Overall, the empirical outcomes show that the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average method is appropriate for predicting India's oil, coal, and natural gas prices. Moreover, the predictive precision of oil, coal, and natural gas in the pre-COVID-19 period seems to be better than in that the post-COVID-19 stage. Additionally, prices of these energy resources are forecasted to increase through the year 2025. Finally, in line with the findings, significant policy recommendations are made.

Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals through technological innovation: juxtaposing the economic and environmental effects of financial development and energy use.

The BRICS comprise of group of emerging market economies which are committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals agenda of the United Nations by the end of the year 2030. In this regard, it is critically important for these nations to sustain their annual rise in their economic growth rates while simultaneously declining the rate of discharge of carbon dioxide emissions. Against this backdrop, this study aims to investigate how financial development, greater primary energy consumption, and technological innovation affect the prospects of the BRICS nations in achieving economic and environmental sustainability. Considering the period from 1990 to 2020 and utilizing methods that are robust to working with cross-sectionally dependent, heterogeneous, and endogenous panel data, the key analytical findings derived in this study reveal that higher levels of financial development, primary energy consumption, and technological innovation boost the per capita economic growth rates of the BRICS nations. Besides, technological innovation also moderates the financial development-economic growth and the primary energy consumption-economic growth nexuses by jointly boosting economic growth rates with these two macroeconomic variables. On the other hand, financial development and higher primary energy consumption are seen to boost the annual per capita carbon dioxide emission growth in these emerging nations, while technological innovation is observed to do the opposite. Furthermore, technological innovation is witnessed to moderate the nexus between energy use and economic growth to further reduce the emission growth rate in the BRICS nations. Accordingly, a set of policies are recommended to the concerned governments in order to enable the BRICS nations to attain the Sustainable Development Goals agenda.

A time series forecasting analysis of overall and sector-based natural gas demand: a developing South Asian economy case.

Pakistan is developing South Asian country which is currently considering alternative energy sources including coal, solar, compressed natural gas, and wind energy to cope with the worst energy crisis in its history. Moreover, the policy promotion of compressed natural gas especially in the transport sector has raised concerns about the demand management of natural gas to avoid future shortages and ensure sustainable use of this precious non-renewable source of energy. Against this background, this study aimed to forecast natural gas demand in Pakistan for the 2016-2030 period by applying relevant univariate time series econometric methods. Apart from forecasting the overall natural gas demand, the forecasting analysis is also conducted for natural gas demand in Pakistan's total natural gas consumption and also for natural gas consumption across the household, industrial, commercial, transport, fertilizer production, power generation, and cement production sectors. Overall, the findings revealed that ARIMA is the appropriate model for forecasting gas consumption in Pakistan. Further, the growth of increase in the level of compressed natural gas consumption in the household sector is more as compared to all other sectors of the economy up to the year 2030. The key findings show that (a) natural gas consumption is likely to grow with time, (b) mixed projection trends are observed for the overall natural gas consumption and other sector-based natural gas consumption trends, and (c) the difference between natural gas consumption and production in Pakistan is likely to grow leading to 2030. As part of the policy recommendation in line with the findings, policymakers in Pakistan should increase the availability of natural gas, particularly in sectors where its consumption is likely to be declining. In addition, more proactive measures should be undertaken to explore the existing natural gas reserves in the long run while also importing natural gas from the neighboring nations in the short run. Furthermore, the government of Pakistan should seriously consider strategizing the development of the nation's compressed natural gas sector.

Pathways to securing environmentally sustainable economic growth through efficient use of energy: a bootstrapped ARDL analysis.

Oman has traditionally relied upon natural gas and oil for meeting its domestic energy demand. As a result, despite growing economically, the level of carbon dioxide emissions in Oman has persistently surged; consequently, the nation has failed to ensure environmentally sustainable economic growth. Against this background, this current study aims to explore the impacts of energy consumption, energy efficiency, and financial development on Oman's prospects of attaining environmentally sustainable growth over the 1972-2019 period. The estimation strategy is designed to take into account the structural break issues in the data. Using the carbon productivity level as an indicator of environmentally sustainable economic growth, we find long-run associations amid the study variables. Besides, higher energy consumption and greater financial development are found to impede carbon productivity while improving energy efficiency is observed to boost carbon productivity in Oman. Therefore, it is pertinent for Oman to consume low-carbon and energy-efficient fossil fuels, improve energy efficiency levels, and green its financial sector to achieve environmentally sustainable growth.

Decarbonization pathways: the roles of foreign direct investments, governance, democracy, economic growth, and renewable energy transition.

The Paris Agreement has united the global nations to embark on pathways to the decarbonization of their respective economies. However, the objective of achieving low-carbon growth is not as straightforward as it seems since the rapidly emerging and fossil fuel-dependent world economies are focused on expediting economic growth at the expense of poorer environmental consequences. Against this background, this study aims to explore the effects of foreign direct investments, governance, democracy, renewable energy use, and economic growth on carbon dioxide emissions in the context of the BRICS countries over the period from 2006 to 2017. The estimation strategy involved in this study specifically accounts for addressing the issues of cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity in the data set utilized for analysis. The associated findings reveal cointegrating associations between the study variables. Besides, the regression outcomes reveal that good governance (achieved by controlling corruption) and strong democracy (achieved by ensuring greater freedom for journalists) help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the long run. More importantly, the results also confirm that both good governance and stronger democracy further reduce carbon dioxide emissions by mediating between emission-inhibiting effects of foreign direct investment inflows in the BRICS countries. In addition, good governance and stronger democracy exert moderating effects to reduce the emission-stimulating impacts associated with higher economic growth. Lastly, it is also witnessed that forgoing non-renewable energy use and adopting renewable energy instead help to curb the carbon dioxide emission levels further. Accordingly, considering these key findings, it is recommended that the BRICS countries should enhance the quality of governance and democracy, attract clean foreign direct investments, promote renewable energy use, and adopt clean economic growth strategies to decarbonize their respective economy.

Pathways to Argentina's 2050 carbon-neutrality agenda: the roles of renewable energy transition and trade globalization.

The government of Argentina has recently declared its objective of turning the nation carbon-neutral by 2050. Thus, it is essential to identify the relevant factors which can facilitate the attainment of this environmental development target. Against this backdrop, this study aims to evaluate the impacts of renewable electricity output, trade globalization, economic growth, financial development, urbanization, and technological innovation on sectoral carbon dioxide emissions in Argentina during the 1971-2014 period. The findings, overall, suggest that enhancing renewable electricity output share in the total electricity output figure of the nation helps to curb carbon dioxide emissions generated from Argentina's energy, manufacturing and industry, residential and commercial buildings, and transportation sectors. Contrarily, greater trade globalization is evidenced to boost carbon dioxide emissions in almost all the aforementioned economic sectors. Besides, the findings also validate the existence of the carbon dioxide emission-induced environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for all four sectors. In addition, financial development and urbanization are also evidenced to exert carbon dioxide emission-stimulating impacts, while technological innovation is witnessed to be necessary for curbing sector-based carbon dioxide emissions in Argentina. Accordingly, to decarbonize the economy, this study recommends the government of Argentina to adopt necessary policies for fostering renewable energy transition within the electricity sector, greening the trade globalization strategies, achieving environmentally sustainable economic growth, developing the financial sector by introducing green financial schemes, planning sustainable urbanization, and financing technological development-oriented projects.

The roles of foreign direct investments, economic growth, and capital investments in decarbonizing the economy of Oman.

Oman is a Middle Eastern country that has traditionally been monotonically reliant on its indigenous fossil fuel supplies. Besides, the nation has also been a surplus producer and net exporter of oil which further highlights the prolonged fossil fuel dependency of Oman. Consequently, despite flourishing economically, environmental quality in Oman has persistently aggravated. These opposing economic and environmental performances have necessitated Oman to identify the factors which can enable Oman to decarbonize its economy for tackling the environmental concerns faced by the nation. Against this backdrop, this study aims to examine the symmetric and asymmetric effects of foreign direct investments, economic growth, and capital investments on carbon dioxide emissions in Oman during 1980-2019. Using relevant econometric estimation methods for controlling structural break concerns in the data, the findings reveal evidence of asymmetric environmental impacts associated with shocks to the nation's foreign direct investment inflow, economic growth, and capital investment figures. Specifically, it is witnessed that positive shocks to the levels of foreign direct investment inflows, economic growth, and capital investments boost carbon dioxide emissions both in the short and long run. On the other hand, negative shocks to the levels of foreign direct investment inflows and economic growth are witnessed to reduce the emissions. Besides, the findings also validate the environmental Kuznets curve and pollution haven hypotheses in the context of Oman. Hence, considering these key findings, it is recommended that Oman should ideally pursues green economic growth policies by restricting inflows of unclean foreign direct investments and green its financial sector in order to collectively minimize its carbon dioxide emission figures.

Reinvigorating the role of clean energy transition for achieving a low-carbon economy: evidence from Bangladesh.

Achieving carbon-neutrality has become a global agenda following the ratification of the Paris Agreement. For the developing countries, in particular, attaining a low-carbon economy is particularly important since these economies are predominantly fossil-fuel dependent, to which Bangladesh is no exception. Therefore, this study specifically aimed at evaluating the environmental impacts associated with energy consumption and other key macroeconomic variables in the context of Bangladesh over the 1975-2016 period. As opposed to the conventional practice of using carbon dioxide emissions to proxy environmental quality, this study makes a novel attempt to use the carbon footprints to measure environmental welfare in Bangldesh. The outcomes from this study are expected to facilitate the carbon-neutrality objective of Bangladesh and, therefore, enable the nation to comply with its commitments concerning the attainment of the targets enlisted under the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals declarations. The econometric analysis involved the application of methods that are suitable for handling the structural break issues in the data. The overall findings from empirical exercises reveal that aggregate energy consumption, fossil fuel consumption, and natural gas consumption boost the carbon footprint figures of Bangladesh. In contrast, nonfossil fuel consumption and hydroelectricity consumption are witnessed to abate the carbon footprint levels. Besides, economic growth and international trade are also evidenced to further increase the carbon footprints. Hence, these findings suggest that a clean energy transition within the Bangladesh economy can be the panacea to the nation's persitently aggravating environmental hardships. Furthermore, the causality analysis confirmed the presence of unidirectional causalities stemming from total energy consumption, fossil fuel consumption, natural gas consumption, hydroelectricity consumption, economic growth, and international trade to the carbon footprints. On the other hand, nonfossil fuel consumption is found to be bidirectionally associated with carbon footprints. In line with these aforementioned findings, several key policy suggestions are put forward regarding the facilitation of the carbon-neutrality agenda in Bangladesh.

The nexus between environmental regulations, economic growth, and environmental sustainability: linking environmental patents to ecological footprint reduction in South Asia.

Environmental sustainability has become a major concern for policymakers across the globe. In this regard, understanding the factors responsible for environmental degradation is particularly important for developing nations. Against this backdrop, this study aims to evaluate the impacts of environmental regulations and other vital macroeconomic aggregates on the ecological footprints in the context of four fossil fuel-dependent South Asian countries: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The major findings from the econometric analysis, accounting for cross-sectional dependency, slope heterogeneity, and structural break issues in the data, reveal that environmental regulations portray significant roles in directly and indirectly reducing the ecological footprints across South Asia. Besides, the elasticity estimates verify the authenticity of the environmental Kuznets curve and the pollution haven hypotheses. On the other hand, non-renewable and renewable energy consumptions are found to increase and decrease the ecological footprints, respectively. Moreover, renewable energy use and environmental regulations are found to jointly reduce the ecological footprints further. More importantly, environmental regulations are predicted to reduce the adverse environmental impacts of economic growth, non-renewable energy use, and foreign direct investment inflows while increasing the favorable environmental impacts associated with renewable energy use. Furthermore, the country-specific impacts of environmental regulations on the ecological footprints are found to be more or less homogeneous to the corresponding panel estimates. The environmental Kuznets curve and pollution haven hypotheses are evidenced to hold for the majority of the four South Asia nations. In line with these findings, several relevant policy-level suggestions are put forward.

The roles of nuclear energy, renewable energy, and economic growth in the abatement of carbon dioxide emissions in the G7 countries.

In the current century, the G7 countries have attached more importance to energy security, and have prioritized low-carbon sources which have necessitated the consumption of nuclear and renewable energy resources to achieve a resilient low-carbon system. However, it is still not clear if the sacrifice has paid-off since the environmental quality in the majority of these countries is yet to be significantly improved. As such, this study employs advanced panel data econometric techniques that account for cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity issues to explore the impacts of nuclear and renewable energy use in respect of CO2 emission mitigation in six of the seven G7 countries. The core objective of this study is to justify whether energy diversification through the promotion of nuclear and renewable energy consumption can assist the G7 nations in complying with their commitments concerning the Paris Climate Change and Sustainable Development Goals agendas. The overall findings from the econometric analysis affirm the abating role of nuclear energy on CO2 emissions. However, renewable energy consumption is found to be statistically insignificant in explaining the variations in the CO2 emission levels. On the other hand, economic growth is found to initially boost the CO2 emission level but mitigate it later on; thus, the authenticity of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is established in the G7 context. Besides, the country-specific results suggest that nuclear energy significantly reduces CO2 emissions in all the countries, except in Canada and the USA. Also, renewable energy significantly curbs CO2 emissions only in Canada and France. Furthermore, the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is validated for Canada, France, the UK, and the USA. In line with these findings, it is pertinent for the G7 countries to boost nuclear energy use to reduce the fossil fuel dependency in the majority of the G7 nations to mitigate CO2 emissions. Moreover, it is also suggested that these nations adopt relevant policies to further green their consumption and production processes to ensure complementarity between economic growth and environmental development.

Estimating the macroeconomic determinants of total, renewable, and non-renewable energy demands in Bangladesh: the role of technological innovations.

Bangladesh is well on course to become one of the leading emerging market economies in the world. Hence, it can be expected that the economic growth of Bangladesh would substantially increase over the next decade. This, in turn, is likely to boost the energy consumption levels of the nation whereby meeting the surge in the energy demand would be a crucial agenda of the government. Therefore, it is important to understand the factors that influence the nation's energy demand. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to evaluate the macroeconomic determinants of total, renewable, and non-renewable energy demands in Bangladesh between 1980 and 2014. Besides, the analysis is conducted for both primary energy and electricity consumption levels. The econometric methods used in this study controlled for the structural break issues in the data. The key findings, in a nutshell, show that economic growth and household consumption expenditure positively influence the overall primary energy and electricity demands in Bangladesh while income inequality exerts opposite effects. Besides, technological innovations are found to be reducing the total and non-renewable energy demand in Bangladesh while increasing the demand for renewable energy. On the other hand, positive oil price shocks are found to be ineffective in influencing the renewable energy demand but slightly reducing the non-renewable energy demand. Finally, the causality estimates portray the feedback hypothesis in almost all the cases to highlight the inter-relationships between economic growth and energy demand in Bangladesh. Hence, in line with these findings several critically important policy implications are suggested for managing the overall energy demand in Bangladesh.