Effect of institutional quality and renewable energy consumption on CO2 emissions-an empirical investigation for developing countries

Effects of tourism, financial development, and renewable energy on environmental performance in EU-28: does institutional quality matter?

Institutional quality largely influences the ways in which economic agents align their production and operational behaviors towards expanding the share of renewable energy in the total energy mix and enhancing environmental performance. This study therefore explores the panel data for the EU-28 countries to assess the dynamic effects of institutional quality, tourism development, financial development, and renewable energy on environmental performance over the period 2002 to 2014. Using a two-step dynamic system generalized method of moments (GMM), the empirical results broadly suggest that institutional quality can be explored to dampen the potential negative effects of tourism and economic growth on environmental performance. In addition, financial development and renewable energy are positively related to environmental performance. This suggests that financial stability and energy consumption transition to renewable energy are necessary requirements to improve environmental performance. The policy implication for this study is that strengthening of institutional quality, financial stability, and adjusting to alternative and clean energy systems are the surest ways to achieve a cleaner and sustainable environment in the EU region.

Financial development and natural resources nexus in Egypt: the role of clean energy sources and foreign direct investment

Purpose

Achieving the goals of the sustainable development strategy and Egypt’s vision 2030 depends mainly on the existence of sources of funds. And since Egypt faces a great challenge in obtaining finance, then analyzing the drivers of financial development is a vital issue and there is a persistent need to shed light on the key obstacles for it. Thus, this paper aims to empirically assess the impact of natural resources, foreign direct investment (FDI) net inflows, education and clean energy sources on financial development in Egypt using the data of the 1971–2014 period.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses auto-regressive distributed lag and Toda-Yamomoto approaches to fulfill the purpose.

Findings

Empirical results signify that all variables except natural endowments stimulate financial development which can suggest the presence of the natural resources curse in Egypt. Moreover, the feedback effect between financial development and FDI is recognized. Clean energy sources cause financial development and natural endowments. Financial development causes natural endowments and FDI leads to the deployment of more clean energy resources.

Practical implications

Several crucial policy implications are suggested based upon these results as improving the quality and quantity of education and encouraging both domestic and foreign investors by providing several incentives. Moreover, the government has to enhance green finance through financing solar energy projects and other environmentally friendly projects.

Originality/value

It is the first research for Egypt that explores natural resource-financial development nexus using time series analysis according to our information, and two important variables are included in the model which is clean energy sources and FDI. Then, although several studies examined the impact of financial development on clean energy no empirical study before assessed the impact of clean energy on financial development.

ICT, foreign direct investment and environmental pollution in major Asia Pacific countries

This paper examines the effect of ICT and FDI on environmental pollution in major Asia Pacific countries during the year 1990-2018. We use Pooled Mean Group (PMG) and Dumitrescu-Hurlin Panel Causality for the estimation of the results. Our results suggest that ICT and FDI affect the carbon emissions or environmental pollution negatively. This implies that with the rise in ICT infrastructure and FDI inflows, environmental pollution decreases significantly in the long run. The Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality results suggest the existence of bidirectional causality among ICT and FDI which implies that increase in foreign investment leads to increase in ICT infrastructure and also, with increasing ICT infrastructure, the foreign investment increases in the Asia Pacific countries. On the policy forefront, the main focus should be targeted towards promoting FDI and ICT infrastructure in order to facilitate sustainable economic development in the Asia Pacific countries.