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This study investigates the nexus between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in Italy in the 1970-2007 years. The unit root tests results point out that our four variables are integrated of order one. Cointegration analysis reach contradictory results. However, the long-run estimations reveal that, if renewable energy consumption increases by 1%, real GDP decreases by 0.23%. The Toda and Yamamoto approach shows that exists a unidirectional causal flow, running from renewable energy consumption to aggregate income, in line with the "growth hypothesis". Moreover, these results are confirmed by Granger causality tests. While forecasts applications set out that VAR forecasts represent an improvement on simpler forecasts in more than half the comparisons, for each variable. In fact, VAR gives more accurate forecasts, over-performing the mean, RW, and AR methods.

Mitigating the effects of climate change is a costly affair, as it would require nations to spend trillions of dollars in order to upgrade their infrastructure and move towards a sustainable and low-carbon economy. Public funds alone won’t suffice as investment from the private sector remains essentialin order to meet the enormous funding needs. In order to attract private investment into programs aimed at adaptation and mitigation of climate change, the European Investment Bank in 2007 issued the first ever climate bond to mobilize funds in order to invest in renewable energy projects across Europe. The climate bonds, later dubbed as green bonds, have grown rapidly in the last one decade and may well be able to meet the enormous funding needs required to mitigate the effects of climate change. The following article, thus, aims to highlight the potential of green bonds as a catalyst for sustainable development and explains how its potential can be untapped by removing a few bottlenecks that may hinder its growth and potential in the long run.

This paper analyses the relationship among economic growth, energy use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Israel over the period 1971–2006. Results of unit root tests show that all variables are integrated of order one. Causality results suggest that real gross domestic product (GDP) drives both energy use and CO2 emissions. Forecast error variance decompositions (FEVDs) evidence that the errors in real per capita GDP are mainly due to uncertainty in GDP itself, while the errors in predicting the energy consumption and the CO2 emissions are sensitive to disturbances in the other two equations. The FEVDs show that forecast errors in real per capita GDP are mainly due to uncertainty in GDP itself, the errors in predicting the energy use are sensitive to disturbances both in the GDP and in CO2 equations, while the forecast errors in CO2 emissions should be essentially connected to emissions itself. Finally, the vector autoregression (VAR) forecast represents an improvement in simpler forecasts in more tha...

Politics dominates daily life as political parties vie with one another for power and plunder of the public purse. High taxes and a complex system of comprehensive controls have produced one of the world’s largest and most thriving underground economies accounting for around 50 percent of economic activity. Rao’s economic reform programs appear to have failed to effect the necessary radical institutional reforms. Only reforms which have been politically easy and not threatened the special interests created by the comprehensive control regime have been implemented. The rents continue to accrue to the most powerful interest groups – politicians, bureaucrats, union leaders and members, public sector employees, selected business groups and farmers. All private property rights are still not guaranteed or protected from government encroachment. In particular, this review points to the politics of alliance building and collective action for sustainability and development. Transformations cannot be managed or controlled, but must draw on an unruly politics, involving diverse knowledge’s and multiple actors. This review highlights how politics are articulated through regimes of truth, rule, and accumulation, and how understanding such political processes has implications for institutional and governance responses. The conclusion reflects on future research priorities and the methodological stance required for an effective response to the political challenges of sustainability and development.

The globe is now in ecological turmoil as a result of the unrelenting increase in global warming. As a result, governments worldwide are committing to decarbonizing the environment, with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) playing an important role in this effort. Hence, this paper evaluates the nonlinear (asymmetric) impact of natural gas consumption on renewable energy consumption and economic growth in the KSA and the UAE utilizing data stretching from 1990 to 2020. The study also considers other drivers of renewable energy consumption and economic growth, such as trade openness and CO2 emissions. The study utilizes nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) to evaluate these associations. The outcomes of bounds nonlinear ARDL (NARDL), affirm the long-run association between the variables in both countries. The nonlinear results show that positive and negative shocks in natural gas consumption have a negative impact on renewable energy in both UAE and KSA. In contrast, positive and negative shocks in natural gas consumption impact economic growth positively. The study proposed vital policy recommendations based on these results.

When attempting to avoid global warming, individuals often face a social dilemma in which, besides securing future benefits, it is also necessary to reduce the chances of future losses. In this manuscript, we introduce a simple approach to address this type of dilemmas, in which the risk of failure plays a central role in individual decisions. This model can be shown to capture some of the essential features discovered in recent key experiments, while allowing one to extend in non-trivial ways the experimental conditions to regions of more practical interest. Our results suggest that global coordination for a common good should be attempted by segmenting tasks in many small to medium sized groups, in which perception of risk is high and uncertainty in collective goals is minimized. Moreover, our results support the conclusion that sanctioning institutions may further enhance the chances of coordinating to tame the planet's climate, as long as they are implemented in a decentralized and polycentric manner.

PurposeThis study aims to explore the relationship among energy consumption, real income, financial development and oil prices in Italy over the period 1960-2014.Design/methodology/approachDifferent econometric techniques – such as the General Methods of Moment (GMM) or the AutoRegressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) bounds test – are usually used in the empirical analysis. Moreover, both the Toda and Yamamoto causality tests and the Granger causality tests are applied to the data.FindingsThe results of unit root and stationarity tests show that the variables are non-stationary at levels, but stationary in first-differences form, or I(1). The ARDL boundsF-test reveals an evidence of a long-run relationship among the four variables at 1% significance level. Moreover, an increase in real GDP and oil prices has a significant effect on energy consumption in the long run. The coefficients of estimated error correction term are also negative and statistically significant. In addition, the paper explores the causal relationship between the variables by using a VAR framework, with Toda and Yamamoto but also Granger causality tests, within both multivariate and bivariate systems. The findings indicate that energy consumption is affected by real GDP.Originality/valueThe study also filled the literature gap of applying ARDL technique to examine this relevant issue for Italy.

This study aims to investigate the nexus among waste generation, economic growth, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in a circular economy framework for the case of Switzerland. Using two different empirical approaches (Dynamic Auto-Regressive Distributed Lags and Fuzzy Cognitive Maps), time-series results show that municipal waste and economic growth have both a short- and a long-run impact on GHG emissions. Moreover, causality analyses evidence the presence of a unidirectional causal flow running from municipal waste and economic growth to greenhouse gas emissions, while a bidirectional causality between municipal waste and economic growth. The results of the static analysis of the municipal solid waste cognitive map show that the most significant system variables relate to the domains of “policy drivers” (education and awareness campaigns and extended producer responsibility) and “environment and health” (GHG emissions). Findings of the policy scenario simulations reveal that the most effective drivers are those about the mission-oriented policy approach. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095965262201174X?dgcid=coauthor