Search

Energy has certainly played a robust role in economic development. However, the damages it has caused to the environment and climate change are innumerable and difficult to identify. Therefore, the new challenge facing humanity is no longer the rise in energy prices or resources scarcity, but rather the climate crisis. Against this background, our paper aims to analyzing the long-run relationship between the energy sector and climate change phenomena for a panel of 14 Mediterranean countries spanning the period 1990–2019. The analysis was based on different econometric techniques, containing panel unit root tests, panel cointegration tests, and panel regression estimators, i.e., Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) estimators. The different findings revealed that energy consumption and various air quality indicators such as carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) and nitrous oxide emissions (N2O) have contributed to increasing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). This empirical investigation suggests that to minimize the spillovers of global warming and climate shift, the energy path in the Mediterranean should be adjusted by the implementation of energy efficiency measures and the advancement of renewable energy sources for reducing carbon emissions in order to preserve the environment for future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of Active Labor Market Policies (ALMP) expenditures of OECD countries taking into account the institutional quality of governance. The emphasis is on the quality of governance that affects the supply and demand of employment and the ability of governments to master public spending. Using the general method of moments (GMM) for 31 OECD countries over the 2000/2020 period, we show that measures of institutional quality such as Control of Corruption, the Effectiveness of Governance and the Regulatory Quality affects significantly the efficiency of ALMP on unemployment rate. This result is found consistent using Institutional Quality Index 'IQI'. The influence of institutional quality on the link between ALMP expenditure and unemployment rate suggest the importance for policy makers to enhance institutional quality. They consider it as a possible instrument for improvement results in labor market of OECD countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine the three-way linkages between renewable energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, and human development index for a set of 14 Mediterranean countries over the period spanning from 1990 to 2016. We used the simultaneous equations approach to estimate these linkages. This system of equations is estimated by the three-stage least squares (3SLS) and seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) methods. These techniques allow it possible to assess all the parameters of the models at the same time and to solve the endogeneity issue. We have shown that renewable energy makes a substantial contribution to improving economic conditions and sustainable development levels. Our results confirmed that renewable energy consumption generates a negative effect on CO2 emissions, thus confirming the idea that employing new sources of cleaner energy is the best way to tackle this issue. We also found that the nonlinear relationship between pollution level and economic development, defined by the inverted U-shaped quadratic form, is confirmed in SUR estimation, but it is not validated in 3SLS estimation. In this context, some countries such as the Mediterranean countries are taking the initiative to restructure their energy consumption profile by investing heavily in the renewable energy industry. Therefore, the transition from the fossil fuels use to renewable energy is not a choice, but an urgent issue to achieve climate stability and, in turn, the goals of sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows labor market returns to investment in education as an essential component of the knowledge economy taking into account the quality of governance of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. Using panel data models, we found strong support for such a tradeoff, especially for tertiary education. The empirical results suggest that returns of education expenditure improve the labor market outcomes only to the extent that the quality of the institutions in the countries is sufficiently high. This implies that the level of governance quality affects education spending, which determines their effect on the unemployment rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to explain how a political institution (corruption) affects the efficiency of educational expenditure as an essential component of the knowledge economy. We applied a stochastic frontier analysis method to our sample of 35 developed and 40 developing countries over 16 years from 2000 to 2015. Using two proxies of corruption based on Transparency International and Worldwide Governance Indicators databases, we empirically demonstrated that corruption can mainly affect the expenditure distortion on education. We found strong evidence of the negative impact of corruption bias on the education technical efficiency expenditure, especially for the developing countries. One of the main goals of the developed and developing countries' governments is the reduction of corruption to ensure better education and knowledge economy, educate the population, and train specialists which are needed to stimulate economic growth by optimizing the resources of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]