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Although financial development is recognized as a vital determinant of countries' economic growth path, many empirical studies fail to further isolate the role of socioeconomic indicators on accelerating growth. This study attempts to fill this gap by examining the statistical significance and the behaviour of several socioeconomic indicators on economic growth. We apply parametric (System GMM estimators) and semi‐parametric techniques along the lines of Baltagi and Li. Annals of Economics and Finance, 2002, 3, 103–116 on a panel data set of 19 Eurozone countries over the period 1995–2017. We test for non‐linear effects on economic growth for three banking indicators (domestic credit, non‐performing loans, and banking capitalization). In contrast to the related literature, our findings provide sufficient evidence of non‐linear relationships between several aspects of financial development and economic growth. Our results survive robustness checks implying significant policy implications for policymakers and regulators in their effort of balancing banking development with a resurgence in economic growth within the EU periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the impact of human capital on tourism growth by using a semi-parametric fixed effects estimator developed in Baltagi and Li (2002). The results shed new light on the existing literature since they unveil strong non-linear effects of human capital on tourism growth. Furthermore, we uncover a non-monotonic “M-shaped” curve between human capital and growth when we impose the assumption of imperfect labor substitutability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study, analyzing the effects the energy taxes may have on reducing environmental pollution, in Greece, for the period 1965-1998, and thereby making forecasts in the coming years for CO2 emissions, is presented.

The empirical analysis employs a static threshold model using a daily dataset over the six months from the first confirmed European COVID-19 case (25 January 2020). The results indicate that the investigated relationship is non-monotonic ('U-shaped') depending on the intensity of the lockdown measures proxied by the Coronavirus Government Response Tracker Index (CGR). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gasoline retail prices show sometimes wild, asymmetric fluctuations over time. We explore the impact of spatial dependence on gasoline retail price formation by using for the first time an asymmetric spatial error correction model (ASpECM). We find evidence that the generally assumed symmetric price pattern is fully reversed when we account for spatial spillover effects, indicating that retail prices adjust more rapidly in an upward than in a downward direction. This finding suggests that empirical studies that ignore the role of spatial dependence and local competition may miss an important element of the nature of the gasoline price adjustment mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between efficiency and market structure for a sample of industrial facilities dispersed among the U.S. states. In order to measure the relevant efficiency scores, we use a data envelopment analysis allowing for the inclusion of desirable and undesirable (toxic chemical releases) outputs in the production function. In the next stage, we utilize the bootstrapped quantile regression methodology to uncover possible nonlinear relationships between efficiency and competition at the mean and at various quantiles before and after the global financial crisis (2002 and 2012). In this way, we impose no functional form constraints on parameter values over the conditional distribution of the dependent variable (efficiency). At the same time, we estimate at which part of its cumulative distribution function the efficiency is located and draw substantial conclusions about the range of policy measures obtained. The empirical findings indicate that the relationship between efficiency and market concentration did change in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The empirical results survived robustness checks under the inclusion of an alternative market concentration indicator (CR8). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to assess the impact of competition on industrial toxic pollution by using, for the first time, a panel threshold model which allows evaluations of the main drivers of toxic releases under two different market regimes. The empirical analysis is based on a micro‐level panel dataset over the five‐year period 1987–2012. We show that this relationship is statistically significant and robust above and below the threshold, even after accounting for alternative specifications of market concentration. Specifically, we unmask an inverted V‐shaped relationship between market concentration and industrial pollution. We argue that the increasing non‐parametric regression line up to a certain concentration (threshold) level indicates a negative effect on facilities' emissions levels, whereas a decreasing line indicates a positive effect. This relationship provides new insights into environmental policy design towards abatement of industrial releases and sustainability. Finally, our empirical model remains robust under different specifications properly accounted for possible endogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the gasoline price adjustment to changes in the input cost price for a panel of 48 US states using a monthly data set covering the period 1994–2011. We build, for the first time, a non-linear threshold panel vector-error-correction model (PVECM) and propose efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) Bayesian techniques. Our findings indicate that states with high margin experience a slower adjustment and a more asymmetric response to input price cost shocks. Our results are robust to potential structural breaks in the threshold parameter, which is important as market conditions change over time and are very sensitive to production/consumption constraints. Lastly, we attribute fluctuations in the gasoline prices to input cost shocks, arguing that the peak responses occurring one month after the shock are short-lived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]