• Energy Research

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all sectors of the tourism industry, particularly air transportation. However, air transport remains an important contributor to economic growth globally. Thus, this study examines whether air transport (a proxy for tourism) stimulates economic growth to validate the air-transportation-led growth hypothesis (ALGH) in the Australian context. To conduct the study, we analyse the asymmetric long-run and short-run impacts of the air passengers carried (a proxy for tourism) on the gross domestic product (GDP) in Australia. We use the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) modelling approach on data for Australia from 1971 to 2019. We also examined the effects of selected control variables (i.e., energy consumption, financial development, socialisation, and urbanisation) on economic growth. In both the short and long run, we observed statistically significant asymmetric impacts of air transport on economic growth. The positive shocks in air transport propel the long-term growth of Australia’s economy. Additionally, according to the findings, negative shocks of air transport have a stronger detrimental impact on economic development than positive shocks.

Environmental pollution is a principal concern for all countries. In particular, the issue is alarming for Australia as the country has been suffering from various environmental disasters for some recent years. Therefore, examination the roles of some variables that are related to environment are vital. To this end, this work endeavors to ascertain the impacts of industrialization, non-renewable and renewable energy use, and financial development on environmental pollution in Australia. Using the data period of 1990 e2020, a series of econometric techniques such as the Augmented Dickey-Fuller test, Phillips-Perron test, Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) bounds test and the pairwise Granger causality test are applied. The findings reveal that industrialization and non-renewable energy use increase while the square of industrialization, renewable energy use, and financial development reduces CO2 emissions in Australia. The validation of the environmental Kuznets’ curve (EKC) hypothesis is also found. Bidirectional and unidirectional causal association of the studied variables with CO2 emissions are attained. All the outcomes are theoretically and empirically relevant and have important policy implications.

This paper explores the impacts of informal economic activities and institutional capacity, particularly, corruption control on the environmental quality degradation of emerging economies under the prevailing socio-economic conditions and energy use patterns of the countries. The study utilizes key environmental degradation indicators: Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, ecological footprints (EFs), and Nitrous Oxide (NO) emissions, and a panel dataset of 15 emerging countries for the period 2002-2019 to undertake an empirical investigation. The pooled mean group (PMG)-ARDL estimator, Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS), Dynamic OLS (DOLS) and Augmented Mean Group (AMG) methods have been applied as empirical investigation techniques. The empirical findings reveal that in the long-run informal economic activities positively affect the environmental quality with fewer recorded emissions of CO2 and EFs while these activities affect negatively to NO emissions. This study has also found that corruption control improves environmental quality by reducing EFs and NO emissions but works to the opposite by increasing recorded CO2 emissions. An increase in economic growth and renewable energy consumption improves environmental quality in emerging countries, while consumption of non-renewable energy degrades the environmental quality. The robust empirical findings advocate policy initiatives for intense monitoring of informal activities and implementation of indirect tax policy to regulate informal activities and the pollution they cause. Careful measures of corruption control and initiatives to bring the informal economic activities into a formal framework are suggested to reduce CO2 and NO emissions. An increase in economic growth with more focus on renewables and phasing out non-renewables can ensure green growth in emerging countries.

Most developing economies have recently experienced significant economic growth without corresponding substantial poverty reduction and improved population wellbeing. This paper uses a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model to explore the growth-poverty relationship in Tanzania using annual time series data on per capita consumption expenditure, real GDP, GINI index, and unemployment from 1991–2020. To explore the causality among the variables and long-run asymmetry between per capita consumption expenditure and economic growth, the study employs Granger causality and Wild test respectively. The results confirm the presence of long and short-run asymmetric behavior of economic growth. Besides, in the short-run, the Granger causality test supported the feedback hypothesis between economic growth and consumption expenditure, and the unidirectional hypothesis from income inequality and unemployment to consumption expenditure. In the long-run, unidirectional causality was observed from consumption expenditure to both economic growth and unemployment. The study submits that while economic growth exhibits poverty reduction features, growth alone is not sufficient to alleviate poverty because the interaction of income inequality with economic growth dampens the poverty-reducing effects of economic growth. Therefore, economic growth has a significant explanation for poverty but not all about the evolution of poverty. The study opens policy perspectives with wide international relevancy as outlined in the policy implication section.

The aim of this document is to investigate the dynamic relationship between economic growth, renewable energy consumption, energy consumption and CO2 emissions in Tunisia over the period 1990–2015. Unit root tests and co-integration test was used in order to detect the order of stationary and to test the existence long run links between the used variables. We apply the Granger causality test and VECM model to discover the short and long run links between the variables. Results have shown a bidirectional causal relationship between energy use and CO2 emissions. Economic growth affects CO2 emission in the short and long run. While there is a unidirectional links running from energy use to economic growth at short run. The paper shares best practices from Tunisia in terms of efficient use of renewable energy policy enablers, which may be contextualized in other emerging economies in order to keep sustainability and to achieve the green economy.

In the present era, economic sustainability depends in many ways on energy security, and this is more applicable for the emerging countries of the world in the perspective of sustainability of their growth. To this end, the present study analyzes the impacts of institutional quality, economic growth, and exports on renewable energy consumption using panel data for 19 emerging countries from 2002 to 2019. This research is based on the panel PMG-ARDL approach and examines the long-run relationship among the variables. The panel co-integrated model has also been employed to cross-examine the result. The robust results of the empirical analysis show that institutional effectiveness, economic growth, and export growth have significant effects on renewable energy consumption. Unidirectional causal link is found from economic growth and export to renewable energy while renewable energy is unidirectionally linked to corruption control. This result provides valuable insights on how emerging countries should best focus on their institutions to make those more effective and corruption-free so that countries can sustain their economic growth with better exploration and utilization of renewable energy.

Exploring the factors that affect energy intensity is a worthy research topic because a decline of energy intensity lowers greenhouse gas emissions and increases energy security. Therefore, using the World Bank data from 2000 to 2020, this study examined how industrialisation, trade openness, financial development, and urbanisation affected energy intensity in 12 Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs). We used panel autoregressive distributed lag/pooled mean group (ARDL/PMG), cross-sectional ARDL (CS-ARDL), and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) to determine the long- and short-run effects of explanatory variables on the dependent variable, energy intensity. All variables are found stationary after the unit root test and cointegration test confirms that variables are linked in the long run. Panel ARDL/PMG and CS-ARDL results show that industrialisation increases energy intensity in the long and short runs. These tests also show that financial development increases energy intensity over time but not immediately. Trade openness decreases energy intensity in the long run but not in the short run. Urbanisation has negligible effects. Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) Granger causality test result shows that energy intensity causes trade openness. The test also shows two-way causality between industrialisation, financial development, and energy intensity. Results-driven policy recommendations, such as investment in efficient and environmentally friendly technologies, and facilitation of trade openness, are made following the conclusion.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the drivers of economic growth in South Asia region for the period of 1975–2016 using the World Bank data.Design/methodology/approachPanel corrected standard error (static estimation) approach and one-step system generalised method of moments (dynamic estimation) approach are used.FindingsBoth the static and dynamic estimations indicate that energy use, gross capital formation and remittances are the main drivers of economic growth in South Asian countries. The effects of all these variables are positive and significant. The extent of the effect of energy use is much higher than that of other two variables on the economic growth. A 1 per cent increase in the growth of energy consumption can expedite the gross domestic product growth by approximately 3 per cent in South Asia. However, the key variables, such as trade, government expenditure and foreign direct investment demonstrate no significant effect.Originality/valueThe current research is original in the sense that it investigated the issue with a new data set using improved econometric techniques. Moreover, in South Asia as a whole, this kind of study is totally absent, particularly with panel data of a large number of years. Furthermore, this study has taken into account the problem of heterogeneity and the biases created by cross-section dependence, which were mostly absent in previous studies. Therefore, the findings of this research are new contributions to the existing literature.