Research

This study investigates the distributional effects of inflation and energy market structure on energy poverty in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Anchored on the extended utility-maximization framework, which highlights how inflation erodes real income value, we analyzed how inflationary pressures and structural inefficiencies in the energy market constrain the progress of SDG-7 (access to electricity and access to clean fuels and cooking technologies). We used unbalanced panel data of 22 countries from 2000 to 2022, employing the method of moments quantile regression for baseline estimation to analyze heterogeneous effects across different distributions of energy poverty, with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors for robustness check. We found that domestic inflation significantly exacerbates energy poverty, especially at the lower quantiles, suggesting that the energy-poorest are most vulnerable to inflation. Similarly, energy import dependency and transmission and distribution losses show consistent strong negative effects, with the impact of transmission and distribution losses intensifying at higher quantiles of accessibility, reflecting the structural fragility of the energy market. The robustness of these findings is validated, making the study contribute to the literature by integrating inflation dynamics and market structures into energy poverty discourse while offering robust policy implications for achieving SDG-7. The findings emphasize that the government's macroeconomic stability objective should not just be for economic growth but also as a prerequisite for ensuring universal energy access. Additionally, it advocates for policy shifts from merely expanding energy generation capacity to investing in advanced technologies and high-quality infrastructure to ensure efficiency in transmission and distribution networks.

The growing implications of global economic activities on climate change have intensified research on strategies to achieve environmental sustainability. However, in Africa, stronger climate actions are required due to the continent's high vulnerability to climate effects, low usage of clean energy, and increasing globalization. Motivated by these challenges, this study examines the influence of environmental taxes, globalization, and clean energy on Africa's environmental sustainability using unbalanced panel data of 27 African countries from 2000 to 2020. The study employed Fixed-Effect regression as an estimation technique to control unobserved heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependency, while the Driscoll–Kraay Standard Error (DKSE) was employed for robustness checks to account for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation. The results demonstrate that environmental taxes function more as revenue-generating tools than as an effective mechanism for achieving environmental sustainability in Africa, while globalization shows no strong evidence of significantly reducing CO2 emissions. On the other hand, we found that clean energy consumption significantly contributes to the reduction in CO2 emissions, highlighting its critical role in achieving a sustainable environment. Also, the results suggest that stringent environmental measures must be adopted by African countries toward mitigating rising CO2 emissions and achieving environmental sustainability. Lastly, the empirical findings underscore the critical role of environmental tax, globalization, and clean energy in achieving environmental sustainability in Africa, as a well-balanced integration of these three elements can create pathways toward sustainable development.

The global human development has improved, partly due to the transformative wave of globalization. However, despite progress in poverty reduction over the past two decades, recent United Nations SDG reports highlight substantial setbacks among developing countries, especially low- and middle-income economies. This study investigates the threshold impact of globalization benefits on poverty and demonstrates the non-linearity of globalization benefits to poverty at different regimes of institutional quality. The Hansen panel threshold model is employed to analyze data of 116 developing countries from 2000 to 2021, with regional estimates, while the reliability and validity of the findings are reinforced using the panel-corrected standard errors and dynamic GMM estimators as robustness checks. The results establish non-linear poverty-reducing benefits of globalization, with a more pronounced impact under high global interconnectedness. Also, the study finds nuanced evidence of diminishing marginal social welfare returns of globalization at higher thresholds of integration. Finally, it argues that strong institutions are required to amplify globalization benefits towards achieving sustainable development goal 1 and to mitigate the negative externalities associated with intensified globalization.

The study addresses the critical problem of examining the macroenvironmental drivers of poverty in developing countries, focusing on how social, economic, political, and technological factors moderate globalization's impact on poverty outcomes. Using unbalanced panel data from 25 developing countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America from 2000 to 2021, we employ fixed-effects generalized least squares (FE-GLS) and system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators to analyze the globalization–poverty nexus. The model incorporates religious freedom, geopolitical tension, economic policy uncertainty, and digitalization as moderating factors. The results indicate that while globalization broadly reduces poverty, its impact is conditional on the macroenvironment. Economic policy uncertainty positively and significantly moderates the relationship, indicating that globalization may exacerbate poverty during intensified policy volatility. Similarly, the moderating effect of internet use is positive and significant, revealing a digital divide where unequal access to digitalization heightens vulnerability among the poor. Other macroenvironmental factors, religious freedom, geopolitical tension, and fixed broadband subscription also exert positive but statistically insignificant influence on the globalization–poverty nexus. Furthermore, our results indicate that economic growth significantly reduces the poverty gap but not the headcount ratio, highlighting that growth alone is insufficient for lifting households above the poverty line, especially with the prevalence of the poverty trap. The result further underscores the importance of human capital in enabling individuals to harness globalization benefits. Overall, the study highlights that macroenvironmental conditions shape how globalization influences poverty and offers actionable policy insights for sustainable and inclusive development in developing countries.

The achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) remains a crucial objective, particularly for developing and emerging economies. This study introduces the concept of “glodebtization,” an intersection of globalization and debt, and examines its implications for the achievement of the SDGs. Using a panel dataset of 101 developing countries over 22 years (2000–2021), the study integrates the Panel-Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE), Fixed Effects (FE), and System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimators to analyze the dual role of globalization in facilitating financial access while increasing debt vulnerabilities and the mediating influence of institutional quality. The findings reveal a marked heterogeneity across SDG outcomes and debt-sustainability trade-offs, where excessive external debt accumulation undermines fiscal stability and hinders SDG progress. Goal-specific analyses reveal a consistent constraint of external debt stock on poverty reduction (SDG-1), improved health (SDG-3), and education (SDG-4), while its effect on climate action (SDG 13) is neutral or positive under stronger institutional contexts. Globalization is found to exert broad developmental benefits and moderate the relationship between debt and SDG achievement, with its effects contingent on regional and institutional contexts, yet undermining environmental sustainability by intensifying carbon-intensive growth. Grants, often considered globalization-linked alternatives, demonstrate paradoxical outcomes as they weaken social SDGs but significantly improve SDG-13 performance, suggesting the need for improved aid effectiveness. Institutional quality emerges as a critical mediator that offsets the negative consequences of glodebtization, enhancing the developmental utility of external finance. These results emphasize that glodebtization’s effects are goal-specific, shaped by institutional capacities, and subject to trade-offs between social development and environmental sustainability. As policy implications, the study stresses the imperative of a differentiated policy framework that integrates debt management and globalization strategies with strong institutional mechanisms and innovative financing agendas to ensure balanced progress towards the 2030 Agenda.

As we approach 2030, assessing the progress of sustainable development goals (SDGs) has become more imperative than ever. This study focuses on assessing the progress of SDG 7, which aims to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all. Achieving SDG 7 requires a dual strategy by strengthening environmental policy design and enhancing institutional frameworks to ensure credible, consistent, and enforceable implementation. We empirically test this proposition by investigating the nonlinear impact of environmental policy stringency and institutional quality on renewable energy consumption for OECD and non-OECD countries from 2015 to 2020. Using dynamic panel data threshold regression, we find that environmental policy stringency and institutional quality have threshold effects on renewable energy consumption. Specifically, surpassing the thresholds of 1.50 for aggregate and 0.50 for market-based environmental policy stringency leads to increases in renewable energy consumption by 8.6% and 12.2%, respectively. Moreover, aggregate environmental policy stringency increases renewable energy consumption from 7.5% to 15.1% at high thresholds of institutional quality. Disaggregated analysis further reveals that market-based instruments exert stronger effects, ranging from 8.6% to 23.4%, compared to nonmarket-based instruments, which show more moderate effects of about 6.2%–9.8%, at upper thresholds of institutional quality. These findings suggest that while progress toward SDG 7 is underway, it remains conditional on surpassing critical policy and institutional thresholds. To accelerate the energy transition, policymakers must prioritize the adoption of market-based environmental instruments and invest in strengthening institutional quality to ensure the effective design and enforcement of clean energy policies.

The nexus of policy uncertainties and financial markets has in recent years garnered notable empirical investigations, as the unpredictability of policy possesses significant effects on investment and market stability. However, empirical evidence on sector-specific responses within financial markets to economic policy uncertainty is limited. This study utilized the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and wavelet coherence analysis to examine the temporal and frequency relationship between global and country-specific economic policy uncertainties and the performance of India's sectoral and aggregate stocks, using monthly data spanning from 2003M1 to 2024M6. The empirical analysis from the two methodologies shows related results. Majorly, evidence of a long-run relationship was found between uncertainties and stock performance of the energy and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector as well as the aggregate exchange market, with adverse effects from domestic uncertainties. Also, there is a short-run significant heterogeneous detrimental effect of global and domestic uncertainties on sectoral stock performance with resilience of the IT sector to domestic policy change. The findings suggest that the effects of both global and country-specific economic policy uncertainty on the performance of sectors and the aggregate market are short-lived. The implications of our findings are discussed for investors and policymakers on navigating uncertainties in the stock market.

Among the contemporary issues in the global environment is how countries' and regions' interactions benefit economic agents, especially in developing countries where poverty prevails. Over the years, globalization has continued to increase, mainly as a result of differences in resources and technology, but how it affects the poor has remained one of the central issues in international economics. In this paper, we thus developed a Globalization-Growth-Poverty (GGP) triangular nexus to provide an answer to whether globalization and growth can help India achieve Goal 1 of sustainable development. The cointegration approach was used, and our result validates the globalization-led growth hypothesis and shows interconnectedness among globalization, economic growth, and poverty, which confirms the GGP triangular nexus. Our results further show that growth and globalization have a positive near future impact on poverty in India. Thus, the results suggest to the government and policymakers that the achievement of poverty reduction and sustainable development in India can be realized with sustained economic growth and increased globalization.

Investments in green energy projects are highly critical to promoting climate transition and sustainable development. This objective motivates the investigation of the effect of green investments on inclusive growth. We develop an endogenous inclusive growth model that illustrates the channel through which private and public investments in green investments contribute to inclusive growth. By employing a dataset of the BRICS economies from 1990 to 2019, we fit both linear fixed-effects and fixed-effects threshold regression, the latter of which exhibits better prediction of green investment effects. Accordingly, the threshold regression estimates reveal that higher thresholds of green investments substantially accelerate inclusive growth in the BRICS economies. Furthermore, by controlling for the threshold role of financial sector development, we document the heterogeneous effects of green investments on inclusive growth. Unlike financial institutions’ development thresholds, a higher level of overall financial development and financial market development strengthens the positive role of green investments. Our findings offer impeccable policy actions to the governments and policymakers of the BRICS economies on pathways to promote green energy investments for sustainable development.

This study investigates the interdependence between oil shocks and green investments over time and frequency domains. Using the wavelet coherence approach, our results show evidence of bidirectional causality between all the variants of oil shocks and green investments around the global financial crisis and the 2014-2016 oil crisis. Economic activity shocks significantly Granger-cause green investments during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The role of foreign direct investment flows in the growth and development of any nation cannot be overemphasized. However, different economic issues influence the pattern and flow of several investment channels. Notable among such economic crises is the recent COVID-19 pandemic that ravaged the entire global economy and restricted the flow of foreign investment among countries. With the perceived influence of the pandemic on businesses and investments, this study investigates the impact of COVID-19-related shock on the FDI flows of OECD countries. Using the Augmented Mean Group (AMG) long-run estimator, it reveals that the COVID-19 shock harms FDI inflows across OECD but enhances the outflows of FDI from OECD. Furthermore, the comparative analysis of the Eurozone and non-Eurozone countries in OECD shows that the effect of COVID-19 shock on FDI flows is positive in the former but otherwise in the latter. Hence, the monetary authorities of these countries must implement favorable monetary policies that will enhance new and ongoing investments as well as the expansion of industrial activities. Also, policymakers in this region should encourage the formulation of economic frameworks that are resilient to several global and country-specific economic uncertainties to safeguard the economies from unforeseen circumstances.

The significance of trade in developing nations made this study examine the impact of trade balance, exchange rate, and money supply on economic growth in Nigeria's economy and serve as a lesson for other African countries. The study relies on the Mundell-Fleming BOP model for its framework using secondary time-series data extracted from the statistical bulletin of the Central Bank of Nigeria from 1981 to 2020. The ARDL cointegration of the least squares was adopted. The result showed a long-term relationship among trade balance, exchange rate, broad money supply, interest rate, inflation rate, and economic growth in Nigeria. Our study thus concludes that the oil trade balance is the fundamental driver of Nigeria's economic growth. Appropriately, we suggested that to ensure economic growth in Nigeria and other African countries. The government should strategize on policies to develop trade in the non-oil sector. Also, the monetary authorities should design frameworks towards making money supply growth enhancers and stabilising the exchange rate for domestic countries to gain more from trade by intensifying the flux of credit to the real and exporting sector towards setting the economies on the track of expansion.