ABSTRACT Advancing new quality productivity (NQP) is essential to deviate from the traditional paths of productive forces and economic growth. However, further research is needed to uncover effective development strategies for NQP. By applying dual machine learning (DML) on panel data for 282 Chinese cities from 2009 to 2022, this study examines how digital economy (DE) influences NQP. Several key findings emerge from the analysis. First, China's NQP has considerable potential for improvement, with the development of new factors and technologies being the main barriers. Second, DE positively influences the advancement of NQP as confirmed by various robustness checks. Third, DE promotes NQP by promoting green innovation, facilitating human resource agglomeration, and improving urban informatization levels. Fourth, the effects of DE on NQP are heterogeneous. From a regional heterogeneity perspective, DE aids NQP advancement across the eastern, central, and western regions, while from an economic heterogeneity perspective, the DE in the Yangtze River Delta, central Yangtze River, and Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei economic areas significantly drives NQP progress. Theoretically, this study innovatively applies the DML method to examine how DE influences NQP, thereby effectively addressing endogeneity concerns and deepening the present theoretical understanding of their mechanisms and heterogeneity. Practically, this study provides policy insights for governments to design differentiated DE strategies and promote regionally coordinated development.

Purpose Reducing construction and demolition waste (C&DW) to further lower carbon reduction (CR) in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is a critical challenge for achieving sustainable development. Enhancing the synergistic management efficiency (SME) for C&DW and CR aligns with the principles of the circular economy and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By identifying the spatial and temporal patterns and driving factors of the SME for C&DW and CR, this study aims to improve the SME of implementing C&DW and CR policies in the AEC industry, promote regional coordinated development and provide beneficial references, as well as theoretical support for carbon neutrality in developing countries and areas. Design/methodology/approach The study employed the Theil index method, the standard deviation ellipse model method and the geographic detector model method to analyze spatiotemporal disparities, evolutionary trajectory and driving factors influencing SME in the AEC industry from 2010 to 2020 in China. Findings The average SME values increased from 0.54 in 2010 to 0.60 in 2020, with a consistent increasing trend. The SME had significant spatial heterogeneity across regions. The overall difference, regional and inter-regional disparities in SME declined over time. However, regional disparities remained the dominant contributor. The center of SME was located in Henan Province, exhibiting a “Northeast-Southwest” distribution pattern with a slight clockwise rotation. The population size and total revenue of construction enterprises were the main factors influencing SME. The interaction effect among different influencing factors manifested in two forms: dual-factor enhancement and nonlinear enhancement. Research limitations/implications In the investigation, we only selected China as a case study to analyze and present a pathway for improving the SME in the AEC construction industry. Future research should consider more countries and areas including developed countries and test comparative analysis of different countries, as well as provide more comprehensive empirical reference for the formulation of SDGs and policies in the AEC industry, which can help the AEC achieve SDGs and a circular economy to balance economic growth paths with environmental responsibility. Practical implications This study revealed the regional differences and driving factors of SME in the AEC industry, which was helpful for the decision-making of relevant stakeholders and proposed targeted development pathways to improve SME in the AEC industry toward fostering circular economy practices and sustainable development. The findings also provided valuable empirical insights for countries and regions facing similar sustainability challenges in the AEC industry. Social implications The carbon emission (CE) carbon emission and C&DW generation were integrated to measure the SME, provided effective evaluation indicator for the sustainable development in the AEC industry. It provided insight for optimizing resource allocation on cross regional coordinated development of the AEC industry and supporting on promoting social equity. Originality/value CE and C&DW generation were integrated into a unified framework for efficiency measurement, enriching the sustainable development theory for the AEC industry. The spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and driving effects of SME not only identified the precise control areas and main factors but also provided differentiated collaborative reduction strategies for the synergistic effect on the C&DW and CR policies in the AEC industry.

Despite the critical importance of rice production in Bangladesh, linking productivity trends and the annual and seasonal dimensions of land use in rice farming remains largely unexplored This study addresses this gap by employing seventy-four years of national data, up to 2020, to examine the significance and implications of rice farming and land use changes for Bangladesh’s economic development. Increased irrigated rice areas contributed to total (wet and dry season combined) rice output and yield. We found evidence of different time trajectories of the seasonal diffusion of high-yielding variety (HYV) rice; and a varying pace of production and yield growth of dry and wet season HYV rice. The paces of growth of total and dry season HYV rice outputs and yields have been tapering off more recently, in contrast to those for the wet season. Seasonal land-use changes over time have resulted in more even agricultural employment and the availability of foodgrains throughout the year. Results show that agriculture’s share in total employment declined from < 70% to ≈38% and the declining trend was faster during 2000-2006. The percentage shares of the industry and service sectors increased to 21.32% and 40.38%, respectively, in 2019. However, the quadrupling of rice yield and rising labor productivity have placed Bangladesh on a higher economic growth path. Our findings suggest that despite eco-environmental challenges in intensification methods, agriculture, including rice production, will continue to be an essential part of Bangladesh’s economy.

Demographic change and long-term economic growth path in Asia

Education can increase the human capital of the labor force, which would increase labor productivity and levels of economic growth. Existing research highlights the role of digitalization and education in enhancing the economic growth path of developing countries. The study has used data from 2002 to 2020 for the 12 selected developing economies. We have used economic growth as a dependent variable and digitalization, education, health, foreign direct investment, and life expectancy as independent variables. The unit root test and random effect technique are used to highlight the role of digitalization with education on the economic growth of developing economies. The study findings pointed out that digitalization with the help of education contributed much to enhancing the economic growth of these countries. The result also concluded that health, life expectancy, and foreign direct investment also boosted up economic growth of these nations. The study suggested more utilization of digitalization for high economic growth. Moreover, the Government must provide a stable environment to attract more foreign direct investment. Finally, there is a dire need to allocate more budget for education and health sectors to improve the welfare of the concerned nations.

ABSTRACTTurkish economy has undergone massive transformation during the 2000s. Annual economic growth reached a peak of 10% in the early 2000s. However, the side effects of global financial crises and the internal macroeconomic imbalances shift the growth trajectory of Türkiye into a new path of unstable economic growth. While macroeconomic consequences are densely discussed we know less about the adjustment of local labour markets. To fill this gap, we examine the club formation of Turkish regions by analysing their unemployment trajectories during the post 2000s. Our findings show that despite rapid economic growth Turkish regions get extremely polarised and form distinct convergence clubs. Remarkably polarisation is higher for the female population. Geographically, polarisation is in the form of an isolation for the least developed south‐eastern regions and some of the developed urbanised western regions. Additionally, our robustness exercises indicate higher polarisation after 2013 as Turkish economic growth starts to become more volatile and less sustainable. Finally, our spatial extensions show that impact of spatial proximity has significant influence on the accurate extent of unemployment deprivation.

Aim: The aim of this article was to assess the impact of institutions on economic performance, using Latin American countries in the period of 1996-2021 as a case study. Methodology: Data for this study were obtained from the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme. In this study, the measures proposed by Kaufmann and Kraay were employed. The study’s time frame spanned the period 1996 to 2021. The geographical scope included 21 Latin American economies. Dynamic panel models were employed. Results: The results revealed that institutions play a fundamental role in driving economic growth. The establishment of a proper set of institutions is essential for a country to escape from the poverty trap. Despite Latin American countries sharing similarities in terms of language, religion, and historical colonisation by European countries, they demonstrate significant economic disparities. For instance, Chile and Uruguay were able to successfully implement reform measures that set them on a path of economic growth. Implications and recommendations: To achieve a high rate of economic growth, it is crucial to establish a suitable institutional framework. This leads to the conclusion that institutions serve as the primary driver of economic growth. Originality/value: The problem of the impact of institutions on economic growth is discussed in the literature and has been the subject of empirical research. In this article, the empirical verification was carried out on the basis of Latin American countries, which is the originality of this study. In this way, it was confirmed on a new dataset that institutions do matter. On the other hand, it should be noted that Latin American countries, considered similar, are not so similar.

This empirical inquiry elucidates the relationship between external debt and GDP in India, evaluating debt’s role in the nation’s economic growth path given its historically contentious yet rising foreign capital reliance. In this study, the researcher examined the external debt and GDP data for India from 1991 to 2023 from RBI and IMF sources. First, statistical tests checked if the time series data had stable patterns over the years. Then, using R programming, we built a VAR model to analyse dynamic interactions between the variables. Further tests on this model evaluated the lead-lag and cause-effect relationship between external borrowing and India’s national income growth during the three decade-long economic reform era. The rigorous analysis provided empirical insights into the dynamics of external debt in India’s growth path since liberalisation. The analysis showed that external debt levels affect India’s GDP growth, but GDP itself does not influence external borrowing. Foreign capital inflows spur investment and expansion, evidenced by debt’s unidirectional impact on national income over the long term. However, excessive reliance can prove risky. The study can be applied to refine monetary and fiscal policies, and develop governance infrastructure and frameworks for external debt oversight and management. The data-backed revelations on debt’s impacts should help policymakers balance the risks and rewards of foreign capital reliance optimally.

Abstract According to the increasing marginal tendency towards tax avoidance, we develop a macro theoretical model and derive an optimal path of economic growth using only dimensionless parameters, which illustrates an inverted U‐shaped effect of income inequality on economic growth in the long run. Specifically, economic growth initially moves upwards and subsequently downwards as the Gini coefficient increases. Moreover, this study presents empirical evidence via dynamic GMM estimates based on instrumental variables and PMG estimates relying on cointegration analyses, consistent with the implications of our theoretical model.

This study provides a comparative analysis of the economic growth paths of Ukraine and Poland from a growth‑model perspective and determines how to calibrate Ukraine’s growth model to converge with Poland’s booming economy. The methodology comprises an approach to operationalizing growth models for GDP growth decomposition into “import‑adjusted” demand components, drawing on national input‑output data from 2000 to 2019. I found that from 2000 to 2003, both European economies relied on a combination of exports and domestic consumption. Expanded trade integration and an FDI boost after Poland joined the EU in 2004 spurred the Polish growth model’s shift to a distinctively export‑led, FDI‑driven strategy with accelerated GDP growth rates. In Ukraine, in the wake of the great financial crisis, I identified a transition to a consumption‑led growth model that, along with a declining investment component of aggregate demand, led to fading growth rates. An analysis of sectoral contributions to GDP growth revealed that avoiding deindustrialization in Poland underpinned the country’s export‑led strategy, unlike Ukraine, which underwent a key sectoral shift from manufacturing to a commodities‑based orientation after 2008. Both these economies demonstrated a high level of integration into global value chains, focusing on labor‑intensive manufacturing and services, but Poland has outperformed Ukraine in terms of share of high value‑added exports, which increased after EU accession. Following the Polish pattern, I propose that Ukraine’s growth model should activate the FDI driver of economic growth, upgrading the export structure and moving up value chains to unlock the country’s growth opportunities. The study represents the first comparison of Ukraine’s and Poland’s economic growth paths that traces the changes in dominant final demand components and macro‑sectors in the two countries’ economic growth profiles. This paper contributes to the comparative political economy literature on the growth models of peripheral economies, providing insights that can inform policies for growth model transformation.

Labor market dynamics and economic growth are two key components that are interrelated in determining the stability and economic progress of a country. In emerging markets, significant changes in the labor market can affect the overall economic growth path. This research analyzes the relationship between labor market dynamics and economic growth in emerging markets. Using a literature study method, this study collected data from various secondary sources including academic journals, policy reports and relevant case studies during the period 2000-2023. Thematic analysis is used to explore labor market indicators such as the labor force participation rate, unemployment rate, and real wages, and their relationship to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth. The research results show that increasing labor force participation and decreasing unemployment rates significantly contribute to economic growth in emerging markets. Additionally, increases in real wages were found to have a positive effect on labor productivity and economic competitiveness. These findings highlight the importance of inclusive and sustainable labor market policies to promote stable economic growth in developing countries. Policy implications and further recommendations are discussed to support effective decision making by policy makers.

Through the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model (DSGE model), this article explores the balance between economic development and environmental protection, focusing on the in-depth mutual influence among economic agents such as households, banks, producers, and government in promoting economic growth and achieving environmental protection. The model comprehensively considers factors such as production technology, carbon tax policies, bank loan rates, and government fiscal policies, aiming to analyze the specific impacts of these factors on economic growth, environmental protection, and social welfare. By detailed settings and analysis of consumption, savings, and labor supply decisions of households, the financial intermediary role of the banking sector, and carbon emissions and environmental technology use in the production sector, this study provides theoretical support for an environmentally friendly economic growth path. Through policy analysis, this article reveals the short-term and long-term effects of positive technological shocks, taxation on energy firms' loan rates, carbon tax policies, and government spending on the economy and the environment, providing a theoretical basis and reference for formulating relevant economic and environmental policies. The results indicate that appropriate macroeconomic policies can effectively promote economic growth while reducing carbon emissions and enhancing social welfare.

Across decades of contemporary discussion on sustainable development, a core concern has been the balance between economic, social, and environmental dimensions. A critical strand of the debate focuses on economic growth versus economic degrowth and, more specifically, on whether economic growth can be sustainable in environmental terms and whether degrowth can be sustainable in social terms. This conceptual and theoretical article used the Sustainability Window, or “SuWi”’ method, to theoretically determine the sustainable window of economies. The window is defined as the upper and lower bounds of future change in GDP that could be deemed in line with achieving both environmental and social sustainability. The conceptual analysis considers all theoretically possible scenario paths for development by combining the outcome paths of economic, environmental, and social dimensions with the environmental and social productivities of GDP. Through SuWi analysis, it is found that only four of the logically possible scenario paths could be considered theoretically “sustainable”—two cases involving economic growth and two of degrowth. In the cases of each of the four paths, sustainability only emerges where they adhere to strict conditions in terms of environmental and social outcomes, as well as related productivities. The SuWi approach and its applied analytical formulas have many potential uses in 21st-century policymaking for sustainability, including supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. It provides a unique and comprehensive theoretical and analytical framework that enables the categorisation of the complex challenges of sustainability and quantitative analysis of policy choices. Such foresight analysis could greatly assist in providing an evidence base for future development planning and policy formulation, ex ante of locking in a pathway. Further implementation in applied studies that explore a comprehensive indicator set, robust and consistent across all relevant dimensions, offers a promising opportunity to advance empirical analysis of key questions in sustainable development globally at a critical juncture in human history.

This study examines the politics of public education policy and its impact on economic growth and welfare under intergenerational altruism. The study considers an endogenous growth model with altruistic overlapping generations. Due to its significant role in promoting long-term economic expansion, we consider investment in public education to be an effective tool of productive government intervention. Nonetheless, public educational investment has been the subject of political disputes owing to its inherent intergenerational redistributive implications. Backed by the tendency of democratically elected governments to maintain their political power, the preferences of some particular individuals or group of individuals become more dominant in the political process of determining the level of public investment in education. In particular, governments are more concerned with the preferences of the median voter, or the current generation at large, because they, as electors, have the ability to determine the next government. This reality leads governments to exhibit a bias toward the desires of these people. As a result, such political considerations divert the economy from its optimal path of economic growth and reduce the welfare of future generations. This effect becomes more pronounced when individuals with lower levels of altruism toward their offspring assume a more influential position in the political decision-making process over the allocation of public funds for education. Our theoretical analyses demonstrate the implications for economic growth and welfare resulting from policy decisions made by democratically elected governments with inherent biases, as opposed to decisions made by an unbiased social planner.

This paper adopts a place leadership perspective to examine the failed efforts of developing high-tech industries in Hong Kong. It demonstrates that it is challenging to change from transactional to transformational leadership and argues that the failure of developing high-tech industries in Hong Kong is partially attributable to the lack of transformational political and business leaderships. The political leaders' ineffectiveness in developing hightech industries in Hong Kong is also attributable to the regional/national/international institutional structural forces that have created both opportunities and challenges. This study contributes to the discussion on the critical value of transformational place leadership for creating new local/regional economic growth path and the embeddedness of place leadership in local/regional/national political and economic institutions.

Forecasting electricity consumption in China's Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration under the optimal economic growth path with low-carbon goals: Based on data of NPP-VIIRS-like nighttime light

In the context of rural revitalization strategies and humans’ increasing leisure pursuits, rural tourism has begun to act as a new development path of rural economic growth and industrial transformation. This phenomenon generally occurs in rural areas around metropolitan areas, manifesting as the transformation or reconstruction of rural spaces. As a result, many new types of tertiary industry spaces utilizing rural land for leisure activities have emerged. We analyze the connotations of rural spatial and industrial transformation from the perspective of spatial production and innovatively propose that the transformed space is an ecological product, which includes three types in practice: industrial space, consumption space, and residential space. This study facilitates urban–rural integration and common prosperity. Given the lack of analysis of rural ecological products, especially rural spatial ecological products (e.g., rural B&Bs and other tertiary industry spaces), this study aims to explore the value expression and driving factors of rural spatial ecological products based on geo-visual (spatially visualizing) analytical tools looking at 10361 B&Bs in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces of China as typical examples. Our results show that (1) the value of rural spatial ecological products is reflected in the price that urban consumers are willing to pay for rural natural landscapes, which constitutes an ecological premium; and (2) the prices of rural spatial ecological products are strikingly different at multiple spatial scales, and this difference is related to the local ecological resources. This study provides insights into the rational allocation of the limited resources required for rural construction, which helps optimize the spatial planning of rural ecotourism and enhance the gametogenous development momentum of rural areas. At the same time, this study theoretically expands the research results of cultural ecosystem services.

The aim of this paper is to apply the concept of marginal vertical income convergence to analyze the influence of the two last economic downturns (2007 and 2020) on the sustainability of the equalization of income levels within the European Union. The methodology used enables us to avoid some restrictions of the classical analysis of income convergence. Income convergence models were estimated using data from the period 1993–2022, excluding the impact of outliers. The results confirm that we can observe the progressive process of the absolute income convergence for EU members, but there are significant differences between countries’ contributions to the process. These differences are caused by different paths of economic growth, and different mean resilience to economic crises, as well as different patterns of income inequalities. Their proper recognition allows us to develop efficient policies aimed at social cohesion, reducing income inequalities (the 10th Sustainable Development Goal), and sustainable economic development. Additionally, the estimated models indicated a definite different impact of the last two economic shocks on the European process of income convergence. The first shock significantly slowed down the income convergence process, while the second one was practically neutral in this context.

How can the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration achieve the carbon peak target: Based on the perspective of an optimal stable economic growth path

Italy's economic growth since 1990 faced domestic challenges, including structural issues, tax evasion, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and political corruption. Externally, as an EU member and participant in global economic forums, Italy's fiscal policy constraints and the need for a comprehensive strategy to foster economic development are evident. This article employs a multifaceted research approach to analyze the economic development of Italy in 1990. First, the documentary analysis includes a comprehensive review of the academic literature of various economists, the historical record of Italy and Europe, and the study of national institutions to understand the economic situation at that time. In addition, quantitative data analysis was conducted using economic indicators such as GDP, unemployment rate, and investment and trade data. These data were statistically analyzed to identify trends and implications for the development of the Italian economy. A combination of literature and data analysis methods were used to comprehensively analyze Italy's economic development since 1990 and to provide an overall understanding of both internal and external factors that influenced its economic development. Finally come out with recommendations for Italy's economic development that will help it to develop effective policies and strategies that will lead to a more sustainable path of economic growth.