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Phasing out fossil fuel dependency to adopt renewable energy technologies is pertinent for both ensuring energy security and for safeguarding the well-being of the environment. However, financial constraints often restrict the developing countries, in particular, from undergoing the renewable energy transition that is necessary for easing the environmental hardships. Against this background, this study makes a novel attempt to evaluate the impacts of FDI inflows on enhancing renewable energy use and attaining environmental sustainability in Bangladesh between 1972 and 2015. Using the autoregressive distributed lags with structural break approach to estimate the short- and long-run elasticities, it is found that FDI inflows enhance the share of renewable electricity output in the total electricity output levels of the country. Besides, FDI inflows are also evidenced to directly hamper environmental quality by boosting the ecological footprints figures of Bangladesh. Hence, it can be said that FDI promotes renewable electricity generation in Bangladesh but transforms the nation into a pollution haven. However, although FDI inflows cannot directly reduce the ecological footprints, a joint ecological footprint mitigation impact of FDI inflows and renewable electricity generation is evidenced. Besides, the findings also verify the authenticity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis in Bangladesh's context. Therefore, economic growth can be referred to as being both the cause and the panacea to the environmental problems faced by Bangladesh. These results, in a nutshell, calls for effective measures to be undertaken for attracting the relatively cleaner FDI in Bangladesh whereby the objectives of renewable energy transition and environmental sustainability can be achieved in tandem. In line with these findings, several appropriate financial globalization policies are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental degradation has become a severe concern across South Asia. Hence, it is imperative to model the macroeconomic determinants of environmental quality across this region. The traditional fossil fuel dependency of the major South Asian nations is alleged to have persistently deteriorated the quality of the environment across this region. Under such circumstances, it can be hypothesized that intra-regional trade within South Asia can facilitate renewable electricity trade to enhance environmental well-being. Accordingly, this study aims to evaluate the impacts of intra-regional trade integration, renewable energy transition, economic growth, and foreign direct investment inflows on the ecological footprints of selected South Asian economies. The econometric methods used in this study are suited for handling cross-sectionally dependent heterogeneous panel datasets. The overall results reveal that promoting intra-regional trade, stimulating renewable energy transition, expediting economic growth, and impeding inflows of dirty foreign direct investments are imperative for reducing the ecological footprint figures of the South Asian nations of concern. Besides, the results also verify the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for the South Asian panel as well as for Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bhutan but not for India and Pakistan. Moreover, the pollution haven hypothesis is also verified for both the panel and the individual South Asian countries. In line with these findings, several environmental welfare improvement-related policies are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of economic sectors’ foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth by validating the resource curse hypothesis in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Applying OLS (Fixed and Random effects), Instrumental Variables (IV) and Limited Information Maximum Likelihood (LIML) estimations, empirical results indicate that resource-FDI inflows hinder economic growth in the GCC economies, while non-resource FDI has an insignificant effect on growth. Moreover, the total Greenfield FDI inflows deter economic growth in GCC economies. These results give evidence on the crowding-out effect of resource-FDI. This paper opens new insights for policymakers in designing a comprehensive policy on direct FDI inflows (resource and non-resource) to stimulate growth for attaining sustainable economic development for the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the impact of conflict on greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) in the mining sector covering the period of the 1st quarter of 2003 until the 3rd quarter of 2017, across 151 countries. Unlike previous works, this paper focuses on testing two impacts. First, we test for a dynamic impact to uncover the effect of conflict on FDI over the contemporary and subsequent annual quarters. Second, we test for a spatial spillover impact. To achieve these goals, we apply both a panel spatial approach and an event study analysis, using a unique proprietary database FDIMarkets. The main findings are as follows. First, the presence of a dynamic impact depends on the intensity of the conflict for the particular country group, with higher levels of intensity being associated with a higher probability of the presence of a dynamic effect. Second, we find a significant negative spillover impact of greenfield mining FDI of neighbouring countries on the greenfield mining FDI of the FDI-receiving economy. We do not find, however, that conflict in neighbouring countries has a spatial spillover impact on greenfield mining FDI of the FDI-receiving economy. • The study examines the impact of conflict on greenfield FDI in the mining sector. • The Paper applied the events study and the spatial econometrics. • The study finds the intensity of the conflict causes a dynamic impact. • Results demonstrating the existence of a spillover impact. • Reducing conflict intensity can improve FDI in the mining sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to identify the impact of fish output on the marine fish trade balance, as well as foreign investment opportunities in six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries over the period of 1985–2016. We applied several panel estimation techniques, including fixed effects (FE), generalized method of moments (GMM), instrumental variable-fixed effect (IV-FE), and panel ARDL.FE model estimates show that marine fish production has a positive and significant effect on the marine trade balance, with a 1% increase in fish production leading to a more than 1%increase in the trade balance. Estimates of system GMM and IV-FE methods, which allow for the controlling of endogeneity, suggest an even larger effect. When we consider the relationship with foreign direct investment (FDI), FE, GMM and IV-FE show no significant effects. However, the ARDL model shows a statistically significant long-term relationship between fish production and both trade balance and inward foreign direct investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the dynamic effect of non-renewable energy, renewable energy, economic growth, and foreign direct investment on environmental degradation in twenty selected African countries over the period 2000–2015. We have adopted Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis and the Pollution Haven/Halo hypothesis simultaneously. In the first stage, this paper performs cross-independence test and found cross-sectional dependence in carbon emissions, non-renewable energy, and renewable energy. In the second stage, it applies first generation and second generation unit root tests for panel data and found that all concerning variables are I(1) except for economic growth which is found I(0). Therefore, we used the Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach using Pooled Mean Group, Mean Group, and Dynamic Fixed Effect estimators. The results indicate that all independent variables are significant and positive to CO 2 emissions except for renewable energy found significant and negative to CO2 emissions, and foreign direct investment found significant and positive only in the long term. Moreover, the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis did not hold in our sample, while we found strong evidence for the Pollution Haven hypothesis in selected African countries. • non-renewable energy, renewable energy, economic growth, and foreign direct investment-CO 2 emissions relationship is investigated. • Positive effect of non-renewable energy and negative effect of renewable energy are found. • The Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis does not hold. • The Pollution Haven hypothesis is verified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]