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Understanding the complex interactions between the economy and the environment is crucial for promoting sustainable development and mitigating the negative impact of human activities on the Planet. The importance of this issue for Serbia is evident as the country strives to balance economic growth and environmental protection to ensure a sustainable and resilient future. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to investigate and model the relationship between CO2 emissions, economic growth, electricity consumption, and trade openness in Serbia. Initially, an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model is used to characterize the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) using data from the period from 1995 to 2019, followed by the construction of a bootstrap logistic regression model to predict environmental quality in Serbia. Long-term estimates of the model confirm an inverted U-shaped relationship, where all three variables exert a statistically significant influence on CO2 emissions. In the short run, however, a causal relationship is only observed between electricity consumption and CO2 emissions. The logistic regression results show that all three factors significantly influence environmental quality. The study proposes policy recommendations for Serbia, such as promoting sustainable economic growth, implementing long-term programs to reduce CO2 emissions, reviewing trade policies to prioritize sustainable practices, and investing in renewable energy sources to reduce emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine the linkages between renewable energy consumption (REC), nonrenewable energy consumption (NREC), carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and economic growth in emerging Asian countries during the period 1975–2020 using a panel augmented mean group (AMG) estimation technique. The results of the long-run coefficient elasticity show that REC, NREC, employed labor force, and capital formation contribute significantly to long-run economic growth. The research analysis also found that NREC significantly increases long-term carbon emissions while REC significantly reduces long-term carbon emissions. Moreover, gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP3 have a significant positive impact on environmental degradation while GDP2 has a significant adverse impact on environmental pollution, thus validating the N-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in selected emerging Asian economies. The country-wise AMG strategy points out that India and Bangladesh have no EKC hypothesis, China and Singapore have an inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis and Japan and South Korea have an N-shaped EKC hypothesis. Empirical evidence from Dumitrescu and Hurlin's causality test shows a two-way causality between REC and economic growth, supporting the feedback hypothesis. Strategically, this study suggests that more renewable energy is a viable strategy to address energy security and reduce carbon emissions to protect the environment and boost future economic growth in selected emerging Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between geothermal energy consumption, economic growth, and foreign direct investments in countries where geothermal energy production is possible. Panel Fourier Granger causality and panel Fourier Toda–Yamamoto causality tests (2020–2021) were applied, which can take into account smooth transitional structural breaks with trigonometric functions using quarterly data for the period 2016 Q1–2020 Q3. Data were obtained from the International Energy Agency (IEA), Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), and the OECD official website. According to the results obtained based on panels, there is one-way causality from economic growth to geothermal energy and one-way causality from geothermal energy consumption to foreign direct investments. The results obtained based on individual countries indicate that one-way causality from foreign direct investment to geothermal energy consumption was found for Mexico and Portugal, and one-way causality from geothermal energy consumption to economic growth was found for Italy and Mexico. On the other hand, causality from economic growth to geothermal energy consumption was observed for Germany, Japan, and USA. No significant results were found for Turkey and New Zealand, and it is understood that the macroeconomic structures of these countries are not affected by geothermal energy. The difference in the results reveals that the application recommendations on this subject should also be different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of a greater worldwide aspiration for wealth and economic progress, increased use of natural resources for diverse industries resulted in increased pollution emissions, mainly carbon dioxide. Energy security, economic stability, job security, biodiversity loss, climate change, and global warming all require reconciliation and resolution now, more than ever before. This paper explores the causal relationship between CO2 emissions, economic growth, available energy, and employment for a panel of eight South-Eastern European countries from 1995 to 2019. We investigate the relationship using panel unit root tests, panel cointegration methods, and panel causality tests. The results show a short-run bidirectional panel causality between CO2 emissions and employment and between available energy and employment. The results further indicate a unidirectional causality from available energy and employment to GDP. The long-run causal relationship results show that the estimated coefficients of the lagged ECT in the CO2 emissions, GDP, and employment equations are statistically significant, implying that these variables could play a significant role in the system's adjustment process as it departs from long-run equilibrium. We also conducted a variance decomposition analysis, which allowed us to compare the extent of the individual factors' contributions to each other over the next 5 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional quality, financial development, and natural resources primarily determine how economic representatives support their operational and production behaviors towards escalating the renewable energy share in the whole energy mix and protecting ecological quality. In this way, this paper is the first to investigate the influence of institutional quality, natural resources, financial development, and renewable energy on economic growth and the environment simultaneously in China from 1996 to 2020. The cointegration approaches verify the presence of a long-run association between the selected variables. The autoregressive distributed lag model outcomes reveal that institutional quality and renewable energy utilization greatly diminish ecological footprint. At the same time, other prospective indicators such as financial expansion and natural resources significantly enhance ecological footprint levels in the short- and long-run. Furthermore, institutional quality, financial expansion, renewable energy, and natural resources significantly trigger economic growth. Besides this, this study has revealed the unidirectional causal association from institutional quality and financial expansion to ecological footprint. In contrast, bidirectional causality occurs between renewable energy, natural resources, ecological footprint, and economic growth. The current research results offer some policy implications that will help to reduce the detrimental influence of environmental deprivation, without hindering the economic growth trajectory in the case of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explores the impact of renewable energy usage, economic progress, urbanization, and trade on carbon emissions in Bhutan. The stationarity among the variables was tested by employing the two unit root tests by taking the annual data series variables from 1982–2020. A symmetric (ARDL) technique was utilized to analyze the associations among variables with short- and long-run estimations. In addition, the cointegration regression method using FMOLS and DOLS was used in this investigation to discover the robustness of the study variables. Findings showed that via long-run assessment the variables renewable energy consumption, urbanization, and trade have adverse connections with CO2 emission, while the variable economic progress shows a constructive linkage with carbon emission. However, the short-run assessment showed that the variable economic growth has a positive impact on carbon emissions. Further, the variables renewable energy consumption, urbanization, and trade have an adverse relation to carbon emissions in Bhutan. The consequences of both FMOLS and DOLS also mean that the variable renewable energy usage, urbanization, and trade have an adverse influence on carbon emission, while economic growth has a constructive linkage with CO2 emission. Greenhouse gas emissions are undeniably an increasing global issue. This problem can only be handled by prudent legislation and funding. Despite having fewer greenhouse gas emissions than industrialized economies, Bhutan's government needs to develop new rules to address this issue in order to ensure environmental sustainability and economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Impact of natural resources on economic growth using the quantile-on-quantile regression (QQR) method and panel CS-ARDL approach. • Natural resources rent depresses economic growth in P5 + 1 countries. • Natural resources cannot predict the economic growth of all economies. • High dependency on natural resources for economic growth should be reduced for sustainable development. • Better programs and policy formulations are required for better management of natural resources. Natural resources represent the base of our living and the entire economic activity. Their depletion is a major challenge for the economic development of both developed and developing economies. Their efficient use is an indispensable requirement and must be the aim of the public policies designed by the authorities worldwide. In this research, we have investigated the impact of the natural resources rent on the economic growth in some major wealthy economies of the world (P5 + 1 countries namely: US, UK, France, China, Russia, and Germany). We have applied a quantile-on-quantile regression to analyse this impact on different quantiles and a cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) approach for the panel of these six countries. The Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality test was also used to check the causality between natural resource rents and economic growth in these countries. Results show a negative relationship between natural resources rent and economic growth for the panel but a different impact on quantiles in each country. Only for China and the US, a positive effect can be noticed for both lower and higher quantiles of natural resources and economic growth. The Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test shows that natural resources can predict economic growth only in China, the U.S., and the panel. In contrast, no causality was found for the other four countries included in the panel. We suggest that nations invest in wind and solar projects, use biofuels and nuclear energy, introduce a temporary profit tax to protect consumers from escalating energy prices, and increase energy efficiency in buildings and industry. Businesses would benefit from a regulatory framework that is uniform and exhaustive, as well as easier to traverse and more receptive to innovation and creativity. Public-private partnership investments in innovation, innovation incentives, and environmental sector opportunities may foster long-term economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to analyze the association between environmental patents and trade openness, institutional quality and Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in the South Asia countries from 1996-2016 through GMM methodology to show some interesting outcomes. Although, as expected, the institutional quality is an integral part of the development of environmental innovation, the trade openness and FDI influence it in different ways. The trade openness encourages environmental patents, while foreign investments negatively influence them. We further articulate institutional quality influences on these indicators as institutional quality is responsible for enhancing economic openness. Government stability positively impacts on the environmental patents, while bureaucratic quality, democratic accountability and corruption negatively impact on the development of the environmental patents. On the basis of our empirical analysis, we suggest that South Asian countries must reforms institutional regulations to promote scientific innovations. Additionally, we encourage South Asian economies to restructure the legal infrastructure as an efficient institutional and legal environment will protect the innovation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to find out if the high economic growth rates achieved by the CEE countries are based either on consumption or on investments, considering many exogenous factors that impact on the economic growth and how these factors can contribute to the employment process in the CEE economies to stress if these trends of economic growth and employment are sustainable in the long run. We performed two Panel Least Squares and Pool Least Squares estimations to determine the impact of the exogenous variables on the economic growth (as GDP per capita growth) and on the unemployment rate in the short and long run, depending on the lags of the exogenous variables used in the analysis. We used yearly data series during 2004–2017 for eight selected CEE countries. Our results show that private consumption is positively related with economic growth in the short run, but it doesn't support the job creation process, in the same way as the savings rate can't determine positive effects on the employment. Public spending is strongly and negatively correlated with economic growth and positively correlated with the unemployment rate in the CEE region, while the net export is weakly impacting on the economic growth in the CEE region and doesn't support the employment process in this area. The impact of the domestic investments on the economic growth is weaker in the CEE area than the impact of both private and public spending, but they are positively correlated with the economic growth and negatively correlated with the unemployment rate, while the correlation of the foreign direct investments (FDIs) with both economic growth and unemployment is very weak, as it is the case of net exports. We conclude that the economic growth in the CEE area is mainly based on the private consumption in the short run but the private consumption doesn't support the job creation process either in the long run or in the short run. The qualitative factors included in the analysis by using global competitiveness index (corruption control, bureaucracy, infrastructure quality, governance effectiveness, political stability, rule of law factors, property rights, markets efficiency, etc.) and corruption perception index are strongly and positively correlated with the economic growth and negatively correlated with the unemployment rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using the Pedroni and Kao panel co-integration techniques, and FMOLS, DOLS and OLS methods, this study explores the long-run relationship among tourism receipts, renewable energy consumption and economic growth for the European Union countries. The long-run estimators report that "renewable energy increases economic growth", "tourism receipts increase economic growth", "capital increases economic growth" and "labor force increases economic growth". Further results and some policy implications are discussed in this empirical study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union's environmental goal by 2050 is to become the first climate-neutral continent in the world. This means specific efforts for diversifying the energy mix and investing in low-carbon energy. Our study investigates the nexus among carbon emissions, energy consumption and mix, and economic growth in a modified framework that includes the contribution of inward foreign direct investments and international trade to lowering air pollution. We have used a two-step approach to explore in more detail the links between these variables in 24 EU countries over the period 1995–2018, followed by a panel VECM analysis. Our results indicate that there is a unidirectional link between economic growth and CO2 emissions, which should imply a decoupling of environmental improvement measures from the pace of economic growth. We also find bidirectional causal relationships between low-carbon energy shares in consumption and CO2 emissions, as well as between low-carbon energy share in consumption and GDP per capita, which confirms both pollution haven and the halo effect hypotheses for FDI on gas emissions. However, in the long term, FDI, exports, and imports have positively impacted the reduction in CO2 emissions; therefore, stronger EU investment and trade integration should be promoted to improve the quality of the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balancing environmental objectives with energy security poses a significant challenge for Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies undergoing substantial energy sector reforms, particularly in the electricity sector. Apart from implementing market principles, improving electricity infrastructure and increasing the use of renewable energy sources (RES) are crucial for fostering industrial and overall economic growth. This study analyzes a panel of 15 Central and Eastern European economies (CEE) from 1995 to 2021. It employs various analytical techniques such as cross-sectional dependency testing, unit root testing, cointegration analysis, and the Augmented Mean Group (AMG) estimator. The results indicate that inefficient electricity infrastructure negatively impacts GDP and industry value-added (IVA) growth rates, regardless of control variables. Conversely, electricity generated from RES positively affects GDP and IVA growth rates in fully developed models. However, increased RES-generated electricity in models without control variables adversely affects IVA growth rates. These findings, coupled with the specific characteristics of CEE economies, lead to policy recommendations for sustainable economic and energy development. • The study examines the impact of electricity infrastructure and RES on GDP and industry value-added in CEE. • Electricity infrastructure inferiority negatively impacts GDP and industry value-added. • RES generation has a positive effect on GDP and industry value-added. • Policies fostering green energy and infrastructure boost economic sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]