Entrepreneurial Finance and Economic Growth: A Canadian Overview

This study aims at empirically investigating the drivers of sustainable economic growth in EU-28 countries. By means of panel data regression models, in the form of fixed and random effects models, alongside system generalized method of moments, we examine several drivers of real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate, as follows: higher education, business environment, infrastructure, technology, communications, and media, population lifestyle, and demographic changes. As regards higher education, the empirical results show that expenditure per student in higher education and traditional 18–22 year-old students are positively linked with sustainable economic growth, whereas science and technology graduates negatively influence real GDP growth. In terms of business environment, total expenditure on research and development and employment rates of recent graduates contributes to sustainable development, but corruption perceptions index revealed a negative association with economic growth. As well, the results provide support for a negative influence of infrastructure abreast technological measures on economic growth. Besides, we found a negative connection between old-age dependency ratio and sustainable economic growth.

This study assesses the impact of circular economic factors on economic growth in six ASEAN countries during the 2010 - 2013 period, based on a publicly available database from official sources, the World Bank, UNCTAD, and IEA. According to the theoretical framework of the circular economy and green growth, the study emphasizes the role of resource optimization, green finance, reuse and recycling, and emission reduction in sustainable development. This study applies the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) regression method to address heteroskedasticity, autocorrelation, and cross-sectional dependence, thereby providing more accurate estimates of the relationships among variables. The results indicate that green investment and urbanization have positive impacts on economic growth; these factors act as key drivers of sustainable economic growth. Renewable energy consumption and natural resource exploitation have negative effects on economic growth; these factors illustrate high initial investment costs, technological constraints, and uneven resource-use efficiency across ASEAN countries. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to exhibit a positive correlation with growth, implying that the region still remains in the early stage of the environmental Kuznets curve, where economic growth has yet to be free of environmental impacts. Based on these findings, the study proposes several policy implications. Firstly, green investment, particularly FDI linked to clean technology, should be further promoted. Secondly, the urban development planning should incorporate circular economy principles, which include smart city development, clean transportation, and circular waste management. Thirdly, the environmental institutional framework and governance capacity should be properly developed to facilitate the use of renewable energy and biomass technologies. Finally, regional cooperation should be enhanced for countries to share experiences, technologies, and develop a set of circular economy indicators integrated into national development strategies. These recommendations serve to foster green transition and sustainable growth in ASEAN countries.

During the Industrial Revolution, a significant increase in output was achieved through the use of machines in the production process. However, operating these machines required substantial energy and inputs, which resulted in increased pollution and consequently accelerated environmental degradation. Over time, these environmental issues have become a global threat, taking the form of natural disasters such as droughts, heavy rainfall, and extreme weather conditions. Within this context, the determinants of environmental quality have attracted growing attention from researchers and have been widely studied. As it became widely accepted that economic activity contributes to environmental pollution, the concept of sustainable economic growth emerged as a new objective for many countries. One key factor influencing sustainable economic growth is green investment, which promotes environmentally friendly economic activities. Despite its importance, the impact of green investment on sustainable economic growth has been largely overlooked in the literature. This study aims to examine the effect of green investment on sustainable economic growth in 17 developed countries over the period 2014–2022, using the two-step System Generalized Method of Moments. The results show that higher levels of green investment are associated with a higher rate of sustainable economic growth. In addition, several control variables are included in the analysis. These are inflation, trade openness, foreign direct investment, and government expenditure. The findings suggest that inflation has a growth-enhancing effect on sustainable economic growth, whereas the other variables have a negative impact. To ensure the robustness of the findings, one-step System Generalized Method of Moments technique was also conducted, which confirmed the initial results. Based on these findings, the study offers policy recommendations. In particular, it emphasizes the need for targeted strategies that encourage green investment as a means to achieve long-term sustainable economic growth and also suggests some directions for future research on this topic.

The paper utilizes the Cobb-Douglas production function with renewable energy and digitalization to estimate the sustainable economic growth factors in the EU. Neoclassical economic theory emphasizes the role of capital and labor as input variables in the output growth models, while novel growth theories are endogenous and emphasize the role of technological advances in economic development. The time frame of the research covers 2011-2021 in order to include the latest available data for all 27 EU member states economies. The research method was fixed-effects GLS regression for the panel data. This study has investigated the impact of different factors on sustainable economic growth. The paper proves that capital and labor as classical production function have a positive impact on GDP. Renewable energy development and digital economy were revealed to be drivers of sustainable economic growth. One of the policy implications is that the governments should promote renewables and digital economy with diverse range of policy instruments for sustainable economic growth promotion by decision-makers.

Impact of biased technological progress on the total factor productivity of China's manufacturing industry: The driver of sustainable economic growth

The role and function of entrepreneurial culture get more important and is the main driver of sustainable regional and national economic growth in Indonesia. The specific purpose of this article is to explain the role of entrepreneurial culture as the driver of regional economic growth in Central Java, Indonesia. For the purpose of this research, a survey for primary data and recursive model of path analysis are employed. The research results show positive and significance influence of entrepreneurial culture and network as well as competition on regional economic growth. With the principle of "tuna satak bati sanak" culture as the basic behavioral pattern of their business, the social entrepreneurial network and entrepreneurial culture in the research area are strengthened. Therefore, with support of entrepreneurial culture, the growth of entrepreneurship in Indonesia will serve more to be the main driver of sustainable economic growth.Keywords: entrepreneurial culture, network, competition, and regional economic growth JEL Classifications: D91, L31, L51DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijefi.7882

This study investigates the key factors influencing sustainable economic growth (SEG) in New Zealand from 1980 to 2023, with a focus on the energy, green, and blue economy, and the short‐ and long‐term effects of these drivers. Using Vector Autoregression (VAR), Granger causality, Error Correction Model (ECM), and Impulse Response Function (IRF) analyses, the study examines dynamic interactions between economic growth and various indicators, including energy intensity, energy use, renewable energy, innovation, technical assistance, fisheries production, agriculture, forestry, and trade openness. The results show that energy intensity, renewable energy, energy use, and technical assistance significantly affect SEG, with differing immediate and lagged impacts. IRF analysis highlights that renewable energy and energy intensity positively influence long‐term growth, while energy use has negative effects. Innovation and technical assistance yield delayed but growing benefits. Fisheries and agriculture initially impede growth but become positive contributors over time. Trade openness supports short‐term growth before stabilizing. Granger causality confirms strong links for energy intensity, energy use, innovation, and technical assistance. Policy implications suggest that energy policies should focus on boosting energy efficiency and expanding renewable sources to reduce the harmful effects of conventional energy use. Innovation policy should offer transitional support through incentives or public‐private partnerships to ease short‐term disruptions. Technical assistance must be strengthened through international cooperation to support technological adoption and sustainable practices. Fisheries and agricultural policies should prioritize sustainability standards and conservation practices to ensure long‐term growth. These findings offer valuable insights for policymakers seeking to enhance sustainability and economic resilience.

This article addresses sustainable economic development under the green investing impact. The authors emphasize that a favorable investment climate attracts green and socially responsible investors contributing to green economic transformation. The research aimed to conduct a retrospective analysis of green transformation to determine the main driving forces and preconditions for sustainable economic growth. The relevance of the decision of the investigated scientific problem is that the green investments contribute to the harmonization of the three main pillars of sustainable development (society, economy, and environment) under the growing burden of climate change. The research object was the EU countries. The analysis covered data from 2014 to 2019 for empirical calculation and from 2000 to 2020 for bibliometric analysis. To achieve the research goal, the study involved the scope of bibliometric and econometric tools. The findings of bibliometric analysis allowed to determine the main driving forces of the economic growth and green investments considered in the literature. The obtained results empirically confirmed and theoretically proved that strengthening and developing sustainable economic performance significantly depends on the success of the green transformation under investments growth. The authors stated the necessity to further explore green investment markets on the national levels to improve the incentive mechanism for developing a green investment market.

The question of whether developing countries should pursue specialization or diversification in export as a driver of sustainable economic growth has been a subject of an intense debate in economic literature. At present, one understanding of the debate, as postulated by Imbs and Wacziarg (2003), is that economies grow through two stages of diversification and concentration as income grows: they initially diversify but re-specialize once a (relatively) high level of income per capita is attained. A U-shaped curve best explains the notion. With Nigeria as a reference country, we employed ARDL procedure and examined the aforementioned exposition over the period 1960-2019. Specifically, the non-monotonic relationship between diversification and growth is examined. In furtherance, we examined the impact of diversification on the effect of non-oil exports on growth. Employing an augmented production-function framework and two distinct measures of diversification, we find, contrary to the Imbs-Wacziarg notion, a monotonic (increasing) relationship between diversification and growth, suggesting that diversification, rather than specialization, continues with growth. Applying a similar framework and five different measures of non-oil exports, we find that the impact of diversification on the effects of agricultural and industrial sectors on growth is higher, as compared to building and construction, wholesale and retail, services sectors.

Prior research has investigated how the prices of stocks and commodities as well as inflation levels have been affected by the Russian war against Ukraine. So far, however, we know little about the impacts of the war on the entrepreneurial finance sector. Prior research on the effects of unexpected exogenous crisis events on entrepreneurial finance suggests a strong negative impact on new and follow-on funding for entrepreneurial ventures. Our study regards the Russian war against Ukraine as an unexpected exogenous crisis event and explores its impact on the entrepreneurial finance sector. It goes beyond a mere sentiment and impact analysis and also explores the underlying reasons and mechanisms as well as potential response and coping strategies employed by entrepreneurial finance investors. Based on two surveys of European venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) investors, we find that the war had a strong negative impact on the two types of investors and their respective funds. Both VC and PE investors report more risk-aversion of limited partners (LPs) and LPs leaving the market as important challenges resulting in an overall lower willingness of LPs to invest. This applies in particular to banks, insurance funds, and pension funds. On the portfolio firm level, securing equity financing and maintaining liquidity were considered pressing issues. Overall, the situation seems to be more difficult for portfolio companies of VC as compared to PE investors. For the former, the financing- and liquidity-related issues seem to be more existential and survival-threatening. Responding to these challenges, both VC and PE investors altered their industry focus and put more emphasis on entrepreneurial experience. Financial investment selection criteria such as financial valuation, profitability, and cash- as well as revenue-generating capacity also increased in importance. Again, differences between VC and PE investors exist. Our study has implications for entrepreneurial finance theory and practice and concludes with an agenda for research on the impacts of the Russian war against Ukraine on entrepreneurial finance.

The issue of countries' competitiveness and sustainable economic growth is constantly at the centre of interest and represents the frequent object of research in economic theory as well as economic practice. The multi-criterial approach and the assessment methodologies relating to the global competitiveness have been dynamically adjusted over the recent years to reflect the current globalization trends in the world economy. The main objective of this study is to analyse the objectivity and resulting values' deviations of the Global competitiveness Index (GCI) and World Competitiveness Index (WCI) composite indexes that are currently considered to be the world's most respected and to identify the impact of key factors that affect the countries' competitive positions with a focus on Slovakia. The research study is realized within the group of EU (24) countries for the period 2006 – 2016. The partial objective is to summarize the main starting points of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Institute for Management Development (IMD) composing these indices, to identify their common features and different approaches that create differences in the results achieved. Then we analyzed the differences between the resulting rankings and the resulting scores of the GCI and WCI rated countries. In the next part, we focused on analyzing the position of Slovakia using the correlation and multiple regression analysis and identifying the interrelationships between individual pillars and the GCI score in order to determine the impact of key factors that influence the competitive position and sustainable growth of Slovakia and improve or worsen its position. Our results highlighted the economic and statistical context of GCI Slovakia development and the impact of the following key pillars and key factors: pillar P1 (P1: Institutions – Public trust in politicians), pillar P3 (P3: Macroeconomic environment – Government debt) and pillar P11 (P11: Business sophistication – Nature of competitive advantage). All three pillars, identified as crucial to the development of the overall Slovakias' GCI scores, occupy unflattering positions in the comparison of pillar rankings. Therefore, we conclude that it is necessary to clarify the causes of their development and eliminate these identified factors as soon as possible. The results can be seen as beneficial to countries' economic policies in increasing global competitiveness.

The concept of a country’s competitiveness still does not have a clear and straightforward meaning and remains ambiguous. Different economists stress various aspects of the concept and use a number of different methods to evaluate how competitive a country is. This paper focuses on the Global Competitiveness Index, which is calculated by the World Economic Forum and is one of the most well-known measures of competitiveness. The World Economic Forum (2015) defines the competitiveness of a country as a “set of institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country” and argues that productivity “is the main long-run engine for growth, living standards and prosperity”. The definition suggests that a higher competitiveness ranking shows higher productivity of the country’s economy, which should lead to higher and more sustainable economic growth. In addition, economic growth leads to higher living standards and prosperity of the country’s citizens. In the light of the definition, the paper forms the hypothesis that if a country is ranked to be more competitive (i.e., its Global Competitiveness Index is higher), it should have greater resilience to an economic crisis than less competitive countries. In other words, more competitive countries should have higher and more sustainable economic growth rates than the less competitive countries. In order to check this hypothesis, the paper uses the graphical analysis method and examines the relationship between the Global Competitiveness Index and the economic growth of countries during the period of 2006-2015. The research findings show that there is a weak or no relationship between the Global Competitiveness Index and the GDP growth of countries; however, it is a negative relationship between the Global Competitiveness Index and the standard deviation of the country’s GDP growth. The results argue that the Global Competitiveness Index is not capable of forecasting the future GDP growth rates of a country; however, the Global Competitiveness Index indicates if the country avoids sharp fluctuations in its GDP growth rates and maintains sustainable economic growth throughout the period.

Modern economic theory increasingly emphasizes the role of human capital as a key driver of sustainable economic growth. In this context, population health is not only a social but also an economic asset, directly impacting labor productivity, educational attainment, demographic stability, and society's innovative potential. This article analyzes the relationship between investments in healthcare and the development of high-quality human capital, as well as their combined impact on macroeconomic indicators. Based on theoretical concepts by Gary Becker and Theodore Schultz and contemporary empirical research (including data from the World Bank, WHO, and national statistical offices), this study demonstrates that increased public and private spending on health infrastructure, disease prevention, access to quality health services, and improved sanitation are directly correlated with increased per capita GDP. Particular attention is paid to long-term effects: reduced child and maternal mortality, increased healthy life expectancy, enhanced cognitive abilities in children, and reduced lost work time due to illness. The study also examines case studies of countries with varying income levels, revealing the nonlinear relationship between healthcare investment and economic growth: in low-income countries, the impact of additional healthcare investment is particularly significant. The conclusion emphasizes the need to integrate healthcare policies into national economic development strategies and strengthen intersectoral collaboration between healthcare, education, and the labor force.

The e-commerce sector has experienced significant growth in the past two decades, outpacing other economic sectors and contributing to sustainable consumption, increased labour productivity, competitiveness, consumer incomes, and GDP growth. This trend is expected to continue, making e-commerce a key driver of sustainable economic growth in Europe. This study aims to explore the relationship between a nation’s innovation level and its population’s inclination towards online shopping in various EU member states. It hypothesizes that higher innovation levels within a country lead to a greater tendency for online purchases. This study conducts a thorough analysis of the interplay between European economies’ innovation levels and the e-commerce market’s evolution. A composite innovation index was created using the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) methodology, and panel data models were utilized to examine the dependencies, with data from Eurostat and the Global Innovation Index. The focus is on the period from 2019 to 2021, which was marked by unique market dynamics and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings confirm the significant role of innovation in driving e-commerce expansion within the context of sustainable consumption, supporting the main hypothesis. This research also highlights the pandemic’s positive effect on the e-commerce sector. The pandemic-induced changes in consumer behaviour, particularly due to social isolation and crises in certain economic sectors, have emphasized the importance of online shopping. Notably, the most active online shoppers are identified in the 25 to 54 age group, revealing a key demographic trend.

ABSTRACTWhilst the last couple of decades have witnessed an unprecedented growth expedition in Africa, an important question is how to make the growth sustainable. A remarkable distinction between the growth experience in the Asian economies and the African economies is that Africa has more or less skipped the industrial stage which many developed countries observed. Given the major contribution of industrialization to growth, this paper examines the impact of industrialization on economic growth in Africa. The examination of industrialization has become more imperative following recent commitments of African governments and the African Development Bank to it, and also it been a core part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Employing data for the period 1980–2014 from 37 African countries and the generalized method of moments method, we show two main interesting results despite the fact that industrialization is very much on the low in the region. First, our results affirm the hypothesis that industrialization is an important booster of economic growth. Second, trade openness further augments the effect of industrialization on economic growth. We also employ alternative measures of industrialization and perform sub-regional/sampling analyses. The results are shown to be robust across.