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This study aligns with the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 11, which aim to "ensure healthy lives and promote well‐being for all at all ages" and "make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable". The study objectives are to (i) explore the impact of different sources of carbon emissions on life expectancy; (ii) evaluate if the impact differs across income groups, and (iii) determine if life expectancy is persistent. It contributes to the health‐environment literature but differs from two standpoints. First, it uses two essential sources of carbon emissions: liquid and solid fuels. Second, it engages robust analyses comprising the full sample and sub‐samples of income groups to further interrogate this intrinsic relationship. For this purpose, an unbalanced sample of 36 countries from Asia and the Pacific region (2005–2010) is used, and for robust analyses, three econometric methods: bootstrap ordinary least squares (BOLS), instrumental variables (IV), and system generalized method of moments (GMM) are implemented. Empirical results reveal that: (1) liquid and solid fuel emissions exert significant negative outcomes, (2) liquid fuel emissions exhibit the most adverse effect, (3) life expectancy is persistent, and (4) impact of liquid and solid fuel emissions on life expectancy across the income groups is diverse. These findings suggest that the management authorities of Asia and the Pacific region need to devise prudent and effective policies concerning human health and carbon emissions while allocating sufficient budget to the health sector to rescue more lives and, thereby, lengthen the life expectancy in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Achieving sustainable development is the prime objective of every government. Based on Solow's theoretical proposition, this study attempts to explore empirically the linkages between tourism, energy consumption, and economic growth, for the top nine Asian travel and tourism countries including Indonesia between 1995 and 2018. The fully modified ordinary least squares method and Granger's causality approaches are implemented for empirical analysis. The empirical result reveals that tourism has a statistically positive impact on economic growth in Asia's top nine travel and tourist countries. Moreover, energy consumption, exports, and savings have also a positive and statistically significant impact on economic growth. The results of panel Granger causality tests demonstrate that there is a mutual interdependence between tourism, energy consumption, and economic growth in the selected panel country group. The empirical finding indicates the positive influences of tourism on economic growth; therefore, the government must strive to formulate a policy that would help to build infrastructural adequacy and promote tourism development in Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental degradation has been a major concern for nations globally in recent years as carbon emissions have increased. Environmental degradation, if not controlled, is one of the dangers faced by humankind, and achieving sustainable development goals is not possible without improving environmental quality. Thus, reliable carbon emission measurement plays an important role in developing an effective climate strategy to address the current environmental issues. Following the trade-adjusted carbon emission measure, an effective climate strategy can be formulated especially following the 17 United Nation Sustainable Development Goals that are intended to lead to improvements toward a sustainable future. To fill the gap in the literature, we empirically explore the interrelationship between foreign capital flows and environmental quality measured by trade-adjusted consumption-based carbon dioxide (CCO2) emissions for a panel of 125 countries in 1990–2018 by revisiting the pollution haven hypothesis (PHH). The results obtained using system GMM analysis show that FDI has a significantly positive link with CCO2 in Asia and Africa, but the links between these two variables are insignificant in the Latin American, Caribbean, and European regions. In the cases of the full-sample and developing countries, a significantly positive relationship is found between FDI and CCO2. In the case of income-based samples, results reveal that FDI is the cause of environmental degradation in low-income, lower-middle-income, and upper-middle-income countries. These findings suggest that developing countries should adopt environmentally friendly policies to attract foreign investors by setting strict regulations on environmental pollution control to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pivotal role of energy in the progression of economic growth cannot be overlooked. Given its importance to policymakers, the influence of energy use on economic growth is undeniably crucial and thus should be explored meticulously. This study empirically examines the impact of energy on economic growth within the production function framework of a panel of 10 developing Asian economies from 1990Q1 to 2014Q4. The pooled mean group, fully modified ordinary least squares, and dynamic ordinary least squares methods are implemented. Empirical results reveal that energy has a significant positive impact on economic growth, thereby suggesting that energy is an important factor of production in addition to human and physical capital. The implication of the finding suggests that all 10 Asian economies are energy dependent and thus can propel economic growth by sustaining energy supply, which can largely improve social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article empirically explores the effect of military spending on external debt, using a sample of ten Asian countries over the years from 1990 to 2011. The Hausman's test suggests that the random-effects model is preferable; however, both random-effects and fixed-effects models are used in this research. The empirical results show that the effect of military spending on external debt is positive, while the effects of foreign exchange reserves and of economic growth on external debt are negative. For developing countries caught in security dilemma, military expenditure often requires an increase in external debt, which may affect economic development negatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable economic growth needs to be the primary objective of every government, including developing Asian countries, to improve the social welfare of the people. Therefore, to achieve the desirable level of sustainable economic growth, environmental degradation must be controlled without lowering real growth and the well-being of the society. This study empirically investigates the impact of environmental degradation by CO 2 emissions on the economic growth of 11 Asian countries between 1990 and 2011. Based on the nature of the data, traditional panel estimation techniques encompassing fixed effects and random effects are employed, in which the results of Hausman's test and other tests show that the use of fixed effects is preferable over the random-effect estimator. Empirical results exhibit that environmental degradation has a significantly negative impact on economic growth. Empirical findings also suggest that environmental degradation should be regulated. Therefore, environmentally enlightened management policies for the decrease of CO 2 emissions and fuel consumption by transportation and industries need to be pursued by Asian countries. The adoption of safe carbon emission cut-back policies is a promising path to sustainable economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the study is to examine the relationship between military expenditures and unemployment rate in the panel of selected SAARC countries namely India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka over the period ranging from 1990 to 2013. In particular, the study used multivariate framework to examine the long-run relationship between military expenditures and unemployment rate by taking into account the effect of macroeconomic variables namely energy consumption, GDP per capita, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) net inflows and population growth rate. The empirical results show that all the variables exhibit non-stationary behavior and have long-run relationships between them. The results of panel DOLS show that military expenditures favor the employment rate in the SAARC region, as the estimated coefficient of military expenditure has a negative and more elastic relationship with the unemployment rate. Other factors i.e., energy consumption, GDP per capita and incoming FDI significantly decreases the unemployment rate in the SAARC region. However, population growth rate does not exhibit significant association with the unemployment rate during the period under the study. In a second regression apparatus, energy consumption, and GDP per capita significantly decrease the military spending, however, population growth rate significantly increases the military expenditures in the region. The results of causality indicate that there is an inverse causality between energy consumption, GDP per capita and population growth rate with the unemployment rate, while there is no significant causation between military spending and the rest of the variables in the short-run. In the long-run, there is a significant causation between the variables with the exception of population growth rate in SAARC region. These results are valuable both for policy makers and government officials to formulate their strategic polices for SAARC countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of corruption as an important element of weak governance, with control variables such as inflation rate, openness to trade and dependency ratio on gross domestic product (GDP) per capita income of nine selected countries in Asia and the Pacific. Design/methodology/approach -- This study is based on an annual panel data covering the period from 1985 to 2012, and a simple multiple regression for empirical investigation is used. Both fixed effects and random effects models were used as analytical techniques. Findings -- The study reveals that both corruption and inflation rate are negatively related to GDP per capita and are statistically significant. As to the impacts of the control variables i.e., dependency ratio is found to be negative and openness to trade to be statistically significant which shows a positive impact on GDP per capita. Practical implications -- The results resoundingly confirmed the importance of good governance, therefore, reducing endemic corruption and controlling inflation needs to be among the foremost factors for consideration for policymakers in adopting and implementing macroeconomic and public policies. In order to be most effective in tackling corruption, it is important to get to the root of the problem. In light of the study findings, it is suggested that corruption need to be put under control and economies be made more open to attain more benefits and accelerate economic growth and development. Originality/value -- Explicitly, this study provides some valuable evidence on the linkage between endemic corruption and economic growth in some Asia and the Pacific countries in particular and on developing world in general. Presumably, this is the first inclusive investigation on the subject under the study in the context of Asia and the Pacific countries and will emphatically contribute to the literature as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]