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Climate change presents a substantial impediment for the global community and prompts policymakers worldwide to prioritize environmental goals when defining national development strategies. Prioritizing these goals is particularly challenging for governments of developing economies still relying on fossil fuels, foreign capital, and industry contribution to GDP. This study examines the relationships between carbon dioxide emissions, industry value added, financial development, and electricity generation in 15 Central and Eastern European countries from 1995 to 2021. To achieve this objective, we examined stationarity and cointegration and employed a vector error correction model to investigate causalities between the variables, along with a variance decomposition analysis. Our findings suggest that the short-run unidirectional causalities exist from industry value-added to carbon dioxide emissions and from carbon dioxide emissions to financial development and electricity generation. Long-term causality exists between carbon dioxide emissions and industry value added. The findings shed light on the challenges and opportunities these countries face in transitioning to climate neutrality and meeting the decarbonization targets. Within this context, the findings underscore the significance of crafting customized strategies for these economies to navigate the complex landscape of climate change while promoting sustainable industrial, electricity and financial sector development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental innovations, investments, and expenses have been identified as an efficient and reliable way of addressing ecological issues. Nevertheless, how environmental innovations, investments, and expenses may influence the level of environmental pollution in European nations and whether the outcome may fluctuate among various environmental innovation indicators remain to be inspected. Therefore, this research is designed to empirically scrutinize the influence of environmental innovations, environmental investment, environmental expenditure, research and development (R&D) expenses, and foreign direct investment (FDI) on renewable and non-renewable energy in a sample of 15 European countries during the period from 2005 to 2018. To achieve this, we apply robust panel econometric estimation techniques. After testing the stationary property of the series, the findings of the Pedroni cointegration test disclose the presence of a long-run stable connection among the series. The empirical results from the ARDL, FMOLS and DOLS regression show that the impact of environmental innovations, environmental expenditure, R&D expenses, and FDI help to reduce overall non-renewable energy and promote renewable energy. In contrast, environmental investment significantly increases non-renewable energy and diminishes renewable energy usage. Moreover, the findings of Dumitrescu and Hurlin's tests discover a unidirectional causality running from non-renewables and renewables towards environmental investment, environmental expenditure, and FDI. Additionally, bi-directional causality is found between environmental innovations R&D, with both non-renewable and renewable energy utilization. Furthermore, we summarize by arguing that the efforts toward efficient and sustainable use of energy by reducing the combustion of non-renewable energy sources should support modern and innovative strategies by ensuring the transformation of non-renewables with renewable energy sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study used an asymmetric ARDL model to analyse the asymmetric (positive and negative shocks) impact of foreign direct investment, personal remittances, total reserves, gross savings, and information and communication technology on economic growth in Pakistan from 1976 to 2019. The short-run and long-run results of the asymmetric autoregressive distributed lag approach show that total reserves have a negative and non-significant influence on Pakistan's economic growth. Similarly, the results of asymmetric ARDL show that positive shocks in personal remittances have a positive and significant influence on Pakistan's economic growth, but negative shocks have a negative and non-significant impact in both the long-run and short-run. The findings of the gross savings show that a positive shock has a favourable and non-significant impact on economic growth in both the long-run and short-run. The investigated outcomes of foreign direct investment show that positive shocks have a detrimental and considerable impact on the economy of Pakistan in both the long-run and short-run. Furthermore, information and communication technology has a negative impact on economic growth in both the long-run and short-run. The government of Pakistan may adopt better policies to build the country's infrastructure by employing foreign investment more effectively. [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]

The G-7 economies comprise a few of the global, mainly economically developed countries. On the other hand, in conjunction with these high economic development performances, the ecological behaviors in G-7 anions have concurrently provoked to elevate deep apprehensions among the stakeholders. Therefore, the present research aims to empirically investigate the environmental influences of nuclear energy, industrialization, fossil fuel energy, and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the G-7 nations between 1991 and 2018. After checking the cross-sectional dependency, this study employed the first-generation ((full modified ordinary least square (FMOLS), dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS)) and second-generation (Driscoll and Kraay (D-K), feasible generalized least square (FGLS)) approaches for robust and reliable findings. The findings explore that nuclear energy production is ineffective in curbing the figure of ecological footprints in the long-run. Moreover, the industrialization process and fossil fuel energy consumption reduce environmental quality in the G-7 economies. More to the point, the empirical findings recommend that these nations can renovate their industrial production procedures in an eco-friendly behavior they can experience an unsoiled deployment of the energy transition. Similarly, the FDI also degrades environmental eminence in the long-run. This validates the pollution haven hypothesis in the G-7 countries. Based on these results, this study suggests the G-7 nations should reduce the production of nuclear energy levels, the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy production in the industrial sector, reduce fossil fuel-based foreign investment, and assimilate ecological welfare strategies within their development planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the role of the import diversification in the renewable energy consumption for a global panel of both developing and developed economies. The study applies panel co-integration and panel quantile regression analysis on the panel data of 138 countries during 1995–2018. For empirical analysis, the authors used Pedroni) cointegration test and panel-quantile regressions. The investigation proves that the import diversification significantly reduces the renewable energy consumption and there is a major need for designing and implementing some revised and synchronized policies of trade with the energy mix and sustainable development goals. The empirical findings claim that the foreign direct investments, natural resources and GDP increase significantly boost the renewable energy demand for both groups of developing and developed countries. Therefore, this study shows that generally the current trade policies might be ineffective and import diversification policies should be reformed to match with the energy regulations, manufacturing, and sustainable development goals. [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]

The aim of this paper is to present an econometric analysis using VAR techniques for emphasizing the political institutional factors, economic freedom factors and the quality of labor force factors impacting on FDIs attracted in Bulgaria and Romania. We used yearly data series between 2000 and 2014, provided by the World Bank. These two countries display a very friendly climate (law income corporate tax), but they attracted large amounts of FDIs only for a short period of time at mid-2000s'. The foreign investments sharply dropped during the crisis, and the perspectives are not so good. The foreign investors claim that high corruption and bureaucracy greatly diminish the advantages of an attractive fiscal environment in these two specific countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an open question to what extent the accession countries will be able to benefit from an increase in the quality of FDI that they receive due to EU membership. The point here is that the benefits that accrued from EU membership to the countries that joined earlier are substantially attenuated for later entrants to the EU because of globalization. This paper will discuss the similarities between the economic structures of those two countries, the Spanish investments in Romania and how the Spanish experience after its EU accession could be used for Romania after 2007 when it acceded to EU, too. [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]