Empowering People, Financing Change, Protecting Nature: Policy Pathways for BRICS Sustainability

The Emerging Seven (E7) nations face challenges in balancing economic growth and sustainability amid rapid industrialization. This study examines the roles of economic growth (EG), resource exploitation (RE), corporate management strategies (CMS), sustainable innovations (SI), industrialization (IND), and human empowerment (HE) in shaping energy efficiency (EE) and sustainable development (SD) from 1996 to 2022. Using the method of moments quantile regression (MMQR), this study captures heterogeneous effects across different performance levels. Robustness checks with the augmented mean group (AMG), common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG), and fixed effects (FE) models confirmed result stability, while Granger causality analysis revealed directional relationships. Findings indicated that RE and CMS enhance EE and SD, whereas IND hinders environmental conservation. EG improves EE at higher quantiles but negatively impacts SD in resource-dependent economies. SI supports EE but may create ecological constraints, requiring balanced policies. HE significantly boosts EE in developed regions though its influence on SD varies. These results align with the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and governance theories, emphasizing the need for tailored policies. Strategic investment into green technologies, regulatory reforms, and human capital are essential for integrating economic growth with environmental sustainability in E7 nations.

The average population in sub-Saharan Africa that has access to clean fuel for cooking and technology is 23.6%. This study examines the panel data for 29 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 2000-2018 to estimate impacts of clean energy technologies on environmental sustainability measured by load capacity factor (LCF) to capture both nature's supply and man's demand for the environment. The study used generalized quantile regression, which is more robust to outliers and eliminates the endogeneity of variables in the model using lagged instruments. Results show that clean energy technologies (clean fuelsfor cooking and renewable energy) have positive and statistically significant impacts on environmental sustainability in SSA for almost all quantiles. For robustness checks, we used Bayesian panel regression estimates and the results remained unchanged. The overall results suggest that clean energy technologies improve environmental sustainability in SSA. The result shows a U-shaped relationship between environmental quality and income and confirms the Load Capacity Curve (LCC) hypothesis in SSA, which implies that income first worsens environmental sustainability and then, after exceeding certain quantiles, improves environmental sustainability. On the other hand, the results also confirm the environmental Kuznet curve (EKC) hypothesisin SSA. The findings show the importance of using clean fuels for cooking, trade, and renewable energy consumption in improving environmental sustainability in the region. The policy implication is that governments in SSA should reduce the cost of energy services (i.e., renewable energy and clean fuels for cooking) to achieve greater environmental sustainability in the region.

This paper analyses the relationship among economic growth, financial development, and human capital for 14 ECOWAS countries from 1970 to 2021 years using panel VARX. Results suggested evidence of bidirectional causality between money supply and life expectancy at birth and unidirectional causality running from GDP to domestic credit, education human capital to GDP, money supply to GDP, health human capital to domestic credit, and domestic credit to broad money. Overall, financial development, as measured by broad money, hurt economic growth, while when measured by domestic credit, it had a positive but statistically insignificant effect on growth. Education human capital did have a positive impact on GDP, while health human capital impact on GDP was also positive but statistically insignificant. Also, health human capital interacted positively with financial development irrespective of the proxy used, but education human capital had no statistically significant interaction with any financial development measures. Economic growth has a significant positive impact on financial development through domestic credit, but has a positive insignificant impact on money supply and human capital.

Impacts of renewable energy, trade globalization, and technological innovation on environmental development in China: Evidence from various environmental indicators and novel quantile methods

Achieving environmental quality through stringent environmental policies: Comparative evidence from G7 countries by multiple environmental indicators

According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), tourism sector ranks high in terms of her contribution to economic growth and employment opportunity generation in most economies. Several studies have been documented in the extant literature on the nexus between emission, tourism, and economic growth. However, the role of foreign direct investment that highlights either pollution haven or halo hypothesis and pivotal role of domestic credit to private sector in an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) environment is lacking in the extant literature. To this end, this study used augmented mean group (AMG) and method of moment quantile regression (MM-QR) approaches to explore the nexus between per capital income and its square, tourism, foreign direct investment, domestic credit to private sector and CO2 emission. Empirical results show that tourism had a negative significant relationship with CO2 emission. Furthermore, income on the other hand had positive relationship with emissions while its square had negative relationship with emissions. This result also shows the presence of EKC indicating the inverted U-shaped curve. FDI has shown a positive significant relationship with pollution which indicates the pollutant haven hypothesis (PHH), and credit to private sector shows a positive relationship with CO2 emission. On the causality analysis from Dumitrescu and Hurlin panel causality test, there was a bi-directional causality between: tourism and CO2 emission, per capital income and CO2 emission as well as domestic credit and CO2 emission. From these outcomes, it shows that tourism development is not detrimental to environmental quality in the Mediterranean region investigated. However, there is need for caution on FDI influx and dirty economic activities that might compromise environmental quality in the study bloc.

Asymmetric impact of natural resources rent, monetary and fiscal policies on environmental sustainability in BRICS countries

Fertility has a close relationship with female labor force participation and is predicted to be the prominent factor affecting female labor force participation in rich and emerging countries. The decline in fertility worldwide, accompanied by increased female education, is assumed to increase female labor force participation. The increase in the female labor force participation rate can improve economic incentives for the country. Therefore, this study estimates the effect of fertility and female education on female labor force participation in cross-country panel datasets from 39 Asian countries, using panel ARDL analysis from 1990-2018. This study also examines the panel causality between the variables employing Dumitrescu and Hurlin’s (2012) Granger non-causality test. According to the Hausman test, among the three models in panel ARDL, DFE is the preferred model compared to the PMG and MG. The results revealed that fertility was negatively significant on female labor participation in the short run but not in the long run. In contrast, female education was positively significant on female labor participation in the long run but not in the short run. Meanwhile, the panel causality showed a bidirectional relationship between female labor participation and fertility, female labor participation and education, and fertility and female education.

Financial and Social Development plays pivotal role in the economic growth of nations. Developed countries have strong financial and social infrastructure. This study focuses on the social and financial development in relation to economic growth of developed, developing and frontier economies. Gross Domestic product (GDP) per capita used as dependent variable. Domestic credit, market capitalization, turnover ratio, household consumption, foreign direct investment, capital formation, Co2 Emission and trade openness are used as independent variables. government expenditures on education and current health expenditures are use as social variables. Unemployment and inflation rate also use as control variables. Pooled OLS (ordinary least squares), fixed effects and random effects models are used to check the relationship among variables from 2001-2017. Results show positive and significant relation between Gross Domestic product (GDP) Domestic credit, education expenditures and health expenditures in case of developing countries. Market capitalization, turnover ratio, foreign direct investment, and trade openness have a positive but insignificant relationship. Co2 Emission, inflation and unemployment rate have negative and insignificant relation with GDP per capita. In advanced countries Inflation rate trade openness and FDI have positive and significant relation with GDP per capita. Domestic credit, market capitalization, turnover ratio, household final consumption and Co2 Emission have a negative relation with GDP per capita. Education and health also have a negative and insignificant relation with GDP per capita. In Frontier economies there is a positive and insignificant relation of market capitalization, FDI, Co2 Emission and health expenditures with GDP per capita. capital formation, turnover ratio, household consumption, trade openness has negative and significant relation with per capita. Education expenditures have positive and significant relation with GDP per capita. Co2 have positive but insignificant relation. Inflation and unemployment rate have negative but insignificant relation with GDP per capita.

This paper investigates the contribution of female labor participation as well female ownership/management to trade margins using firm-level data for 18 manufacturing and services sectors in eight MENA countries for 2013. This topic is innovative, and critical for the MENA region where female participation in the export sector is shy, at a time the region is looking for new sources of competitiveness to boost its exports. Our results show that first, female labor participation has a positive a significant impact on both the probability of export and export volume, with the effect being independent of the size of the firm. Female labor participation matters in traditional sectors where the MENA region has a comparative advantage. Second, while the effect of female ownership or management is not significant on trade margins, female management/ownership exerts a positive effect on the probability of large firms to export. This positive effect is mainly driven by female ownership and not management, and thus sheds light on the potential importance of female empowerment in international trade. Third, the effect of some regulatory barriers on exports is more pronounced for a female-owned/managed firm, with respect to a men-owned/managed firm.

This study examines the effects of globalization on environmental quality, explicitly focusing on the scale, technique, and composition aspects proposed by KOF Swiss Economic Institute. A large sample of 115 developed and developing countries is analyzed to understand how different dimensions of globalization impact environmental degradation at various levels, using the quantile regression method. The results indicate that globalization has a positive effect on emissions at lower and middle quantiles, but at the upper quantiles, the effect becomes negative, based on the distribution of CO<sub>2</sub> per capita (CO2PC). Additionally, each dimension of globalization has its influence on emissions: (i) Renewable energy consumption significantly negatively impacts environmental quality across most percentiles, except for the 90<sup>th</sup> percentile. (ii) Foreign direct investment inflows positively affect environmental quality at lower quantiles but negatively at higher quantiles. (iii) Urbanization initially correlates negatively with environmental degradation at the 50<sub>th</sub> percentile, but this relationship turns positive at the 75<sup>th</sup> percentile. Overall, globalization benefits countries facing environmental degradation seriously, while countries maintaining a high quality environment have not benefited much from globalization. These findings offer valuable insights for policymakers in developing effective environmental policies considering diverse economic and environmental conditions across countries.

Trade Liberalisation and Female Employment in Botswana and South Africa

A THEORY of human capital is in the process of formulation. The primary question is "What is the contribution of changes in the quality of people to economic growth?" The academic economists first raised the question after their research showed that production in developed economies had been increasing much faster than could be explained by inputs of physical capital and additions to the labor force. But the wide interest which the question has aroused indicates much more than academic curiosity. It reflects the desires and aspirations of people throughout the world-people anxious to add weight to their demands for action against disease and illiteracy by showing that such action is not only humanitarian, but will make a major contribution to economic growth as well. Though research on the return to investment in people is barely getting started, even the most tentative conclusions have been widely quoted. Preliminary indications that the rate of return on investment in people is high have been seized upon in a growing number of countries as justification for in-

This study investigates the effect of income per capita, air pollution and healthcare services on health expenditure in Asian economies using annual data from 1995 to 2018. The determinants of total health expenditure and public and private sector health expenditures are estimated separately. The Generalised Methods of Moment (GMM) and Instrument Variable Quantile Panel Regression (IVQPR) techniques are employed in this study. The results explain that environmental pollution, the price of health care, urbanisation and the number of hospital beds have positive effects on total health expenditures as well as on public and private health expenditures. Interestingly, income per capita has a negative effect on health expenditure at lower quantiles and a positive at higher quantiles. The proportion of the elderly population has an adverse effect on total health expenditure, while life expectancy shows a positive effect at lower quantiles and a negative effect at higher quantiles on health expenditure. The impact of the number of physicians per capita is found to be negative and significant, while the availability of safe drinking water and education demonstrates a positive effect on health expenditure. Out‐of‐pocket expenditure and technological progress are positively associated with health expenditure. Smoking is a significant determinant of government health expenditure, but it is difficult to determine the trend of smoking prevalence in Asian economies. The outcomes of this study provide some important insights to policymakers, which can be used to design a more efficient healthcare sector in Asian countries.

This paper shows the strong relation between the factors that lead to the resource curse (RC) and factors that lead to a decline of genuine savings (GS). There is substantial empirical evidence that economies that rely predominantly on their natural resources are also characterized by slower economic growth. This so‐called RC is commonly traced back to the fact that natural resources' generate rents that are independent of a country's economic performance, which can lead to suboptimal reinvestments of this consumed natural capital. We argue that the factors responsible for the RC also have a negative effect on GS, a concept that measures “weak” sustainable development by considering reinvestment of natural capital rents in physical and human capital. We discuss whether the RC hampers possibilities for resource abundant countries to obtain sufficiently high rates of GS, and find indeed many reasons why resource‐dependent countries have problems achieving positive GS rates. We survey both areas of research, emphasizing the influence of the exogenous and endogenous determinants of economic growth, which are usually used to theoretically and empirically explain the RC on the three different forms of capital considered by GS. We specify why most countries suffering from the RC have negative GS rates and explain in detail where the linkages are. This overview could help with potential advancements in the explanation of GS through the inclusion of RC effects.