Relationship between financial inclusion and carbon emissions: International evidence.

The nexus between financial inclusion and carbon emissions is becoming an increasingly important topic, given the augmented awareness of the negative impacts of climate change and carbon emissions on the environment and human health. In this study, we examine the impact of financial inclusion on carbon emissions using the STIRPAT framework for 102 countries from 2004 to 2020. We measure financial inclusion as a composite index, using principal component analysis (PCA) from five financial inclusion proxies. Our robust panel regression estimations suggest an N-Shaped relationship between financial inclusion and carbon emissions. The N-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) implies that the impact of financial inclusion on carbon emission is nonlinear and changes from an inverted U-shaped to a U-shaped. This finding is strong in developing countries and weak in advanced countries. It is also robust across our two normalized measures of financial inclusion as well as across different estimation techniques. These findings suggest adapting a universal environmental strategy that enhances financial inclusion through strong and accessible financial systems, particularly for low-income countries. Our results further suggest that government authorities and policymakers need to develop well-directed and inclusive financial policies that consider the varying levels of governance, regulations, and income across countries.

How media coverage news and global uncertainties drive forecast of cryptocurrencies returns?

This paper aims to investigate the impact of global financial, economic, and gold price uncertainty indices (VIX, EPU, and GVZ) and investor sentiment based on media coverage news on the returns of Bitcoin and Ethereum during the COVID-19 pandemic. We adopt an asymmetric framework based on the Quantile-on-Quantile approach, which examines the quantiles of the cryptocurrency returns, investor sentiment, and the various uncertainties indicators. The empirical findings suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted cryptocurrency returns. Specifically, (i) the results demonstrate the predictive power of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) during this period, as evidenced by a strong negative association between EPU and cryptocurrency returns across all quantiles; (ii) the correlation between cryptocurrency returns and the VIX index was negative but weak, across various quantile combinations of Ethereum and Bitcoin returns; (iii) an increase in COVID-19 news negatively affected Bitcoin returns across all quantiles; (iv) Bitcoin and Ethereum cannot be relied upon as effective hedging tools against global financial and economic uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic. Studying the behavior of cryptocurrency during uncertainty like pandemics is extremely important because it provides investors with insights on diversifying their portfolios and hedging their risks.

Tail event-based sovereign credit risk transmission network during COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper investigates the interconnectedness between sovereign credit risk based on the tail event and network dynamics technique. Specifically, we examine the interdependence in upper tails of sovereign credit default swap in the case of fifteen most COVID-19 affected countries. Empirical findings indicate that connectedness among SCDS spreads changed over time and is higher during the COVID19 outbreak. Russia, Brazil, and China are the most credit risk emitter and receiver during the COVID-19 pandemic.