• Energy Research

This paper examines the nexus between the main forms of transport, related investments, specific air pollutants, and sustainable economic growth. The research is important since transport may act as a facilitator of social, economic, and environmental development. Based on data retrieved from Eurostat, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and World Bank, the output of fixed-effects regressions for EU-28 countries over 1990–2016 reveals that road, inland waterways, maritime, and air transport infrastructure positively influence gross domestic product per capita (GDPC), though a negative link occurred in the case of railway transport. As concerning investments in transport infrastructure, the empirical results exhibit a positive impact on economic growth for every type of transport, except inland waterways. Besides, emissions of CO2 from all kind of transport, alongside other specific air pollutants, negatively influence GDPC. The fully modified and dynamic ordinary least squares panel estimation results reinforce the findings. Further, in the short-run, Granger causality based on panel vector error correction model pointed out a unidirectional causal link running from sustainable economic growth to inland waterways and maritime transport of goods, albeit a one-way causal link running from the volume of goods transported by air to GDPC. As well, the empirical results provide support one-way short-run links running from GDPC to investments in road and inland waterway transport infrastructure. In addition, a bidirectional short-run link occurred between carbon dioxide emissions from railway transport and GDPC, whereas unidirectional relations with economic growth were identified in the case of carbon dioxide emissions from road and domestic aviation. In the long-run, a bidirectional causal relation was noticed between the length of the railways lines, investments in railway transport infrastructure, and GDPC, as well as a two-way causal link between the gross weight of seaborne goods handled in ports and GDPC.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are crucial for local economic development, playing a noteworthy role in job creation, poverty alleviation and economic growth, but they encounter many funding barriers. The purpose of the current paper is to investigate the impact of investments and innovation on territorial economic growth, as measured by turnover, for Romanian active enterprises, especially SMEs, over the period 2009–2017. By estimating several log–log linear regressions, the quantitative outcomes provide support for a positive influence of investments on turnover. The association was confirmed both for all active enterprises at the national level, as well as for micro, small, middle-sized and big companies. As regards expenditures on innovation, a positive impact on turnover was acknowledged for all enterprises and particularly for big companies, but there was an absence of any statistically significant relation in the case of SMEs. The impact of firm size on turnover was positive for all active enterprises at the national level, along with active micro-units. Also, the estimation results show a positive impact of the number of active micro-units on territorial economic growth. The empirical findings are relevant to managers and policymakers in order to stimulate, encourage and offer support to SMEs’ development through their strategies.

This study evaluates the synergy of coalition for hybrid renewable energy (RWB) system alternatives. In this context, the alternative sources of hybrid RWB system are examined to illustrate the impact-relation directions among them with multi SWARA based on q-ROFs and golden cut. Next, the performances of renewable alternatives are measured in terms of the synergy of coalition with game theory and Shapley value. It is concluded that solar energy is the most suitable RWB alternative for synergy to increase efficiency in investments. However, biomass does not have a significant influence on providing synergy in energy investments. Therefore, solar energy should be prioritized for hybrid energy investments. Especially with the effect of technological developments, the efficiency of solar energy investments increases significantly. Thus, solar energy investments have become quite suitable for increasing the synergy in hybrid energy projects. Furthermore, necessary research should be conducted to make biomass energy more efficient.

This study examined the asymmetric effects of major uncertainty and volatility indices (economic policy uncertainty, Chicago Board Options Exchange crude oil volatility, CBOE volatility index, CBOE VIX volatility, and NASDAQ 100 volatility target) on the returns of global energy and its constituents (global energy index, Brent, heating oil, natural gas, and petroleum). The causalityin-quantiles test and the quantile-on-quantile regression technique were employed on daily data covering the period between April 2012 and March 2022. The findings evidenced asymmetries and heterogeneity in the causal effects of global uncertainty and market volatilities on energy markets. For all uncertainty and volatility measures, we found strong negative relationships with energy commodities at stressed conditions, signalling some hedging benefits for market participants. The current research is among the first investigations to explore the asymmetric relationships between major uncertainty and volatility indices, as well as global energy and its constituents. Essential portfolio implications of our findings are discussed.

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 paper explores the sensitivity of Romanian collective investment undertakings’ returns to changes in equity, fixed income and foreign exchange market returns. We use a sample of 80 open-end investment funds and pension funds with daily returns between 2016 and 2018. Our methodology consists of measuring changes in the daily conditional volatility for the fund returns (EGARCH) and changes in their conditional correlation with selected market risk factors (DCC MV-GARCH) throughout different volatility regimes identified using a Markov Regime Switching model. We argue that, on average, the level of conditional correlations between funds and market risk factors remained stable and unconcerned by the volatility regimes. In addition, for only less than half of the funds in the sample, their volatility regimes were synchronized with those of the selected market risk factors. We found that, on average, fund returns are more correlated with equity returns and less correlated with changes in local bond yields, while not being significantly influenced by changes in foreign bond yields or changes in foreign exchange. During the period investigated equity returns were the most volatile while the funds returns volatility were, on average, much more reduced. Overall, our results show the resilience of the Romanian collective investment sector to the selected market risk factors, during the investigated period.

Abstract The objective of the present paper is to determine the existence of a link between energy, CO2 emissions, economic growth, and urbanization worldwide level. Therefore, to achieve our goal, we approached a series of statistical techniques that allow us to study the cointegration between variables, impulse response function to follows the effect of a shock that occurred, and not least we investigated the types of causality that are established through the Granger causality test. We selected annual data for the period of 1990–2014, for a number of 106 countries. The empirical results confirmed the presence of long-term associations. The impulse response functions and the variance decomposition gave us an overview on how the variables: renewable energy consumption, types of energy, economic growth, CO2, and urbanization are explained by the others variables. Following the Granger causality test, both unidirectional and bidirectional causal relationships were identified. We are confident that our empirical results should be of interest to researchers, regulatory institutions, and investors as well.

Abstract This article aims to investigate the existance of a possible dynamic link among economic growth, renewable energy consumption, environmental emissions, and CO2 across various countries from 2000 to 2019. By categorizing countries based on income levels, the research analyzes the interactions among variables such as CO2 emissions, foreign direct investments (FDI), labor force, industrial value-added, and gross capital formation. Employing a quantitative approach, several statistical methods were applied, including panel unit root examination, Pedroni cointegration analysis, VECM models (Vector Error Correction Model), and panel causality testing. Evidence of cointegration among the variables was found. The causality test showed causal relationships between the variables. The results obtained during this reserach could define preliminary premises for policymakers and stakeholders, as they underscore relevant and high determinant relationships between energy consumption, environmental factors, and economic development.The study underscores that while renewable energy is vital for sustainable development, its impact on economic growth being is influenced by various factors and policies.