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This paper aims to reexamine the relationship between financial openness and financial development in Ghana.

The study applied maximum likelihood estimation and autoregressive distributed lag approach and tested Granger causality using quarterly data from 1990:1 to 2020:4.

This study revealed a long-run equilibrium relationship between financial openness and development, indicating that financial openness is a critical factor in Ghana’s financial development. Therefore, the study recommends with caution that policies aimed at promoting financial openness could be an effective way to encourage sustainable financial development in Ghana, as financial openness alone may not bring the desired outcome.

The study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing empirical evidence of the link between financial openness and financial sector development in Ghana. Future research could delve deeper into the mechanisms through which financial openness affects financial development, exploring potential channels and transmission mechanisms.

The findings suggest that policymakers, particularly the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Ghana, should prioritize policies aimed at promoting financial openness. This includes continued efforts toward financial liberalization and creating an environment conducive to domestic and international financial transactions. Moreover, policies aimed at increasing trade openness, boosting real GDP and maintaining moderate real interest rates are essential for fostering financial sector development.

Enhancing financial sector development can have significant implications for society, including increased access to financial services, improved economic opportunities and enhanced overall economic stability. By promoting financial openness and development, policymakers would contribute to poverty reduction, job creation and overall socio-economic development. The study bridges the gap between theory and practice by providing empirical evidence supporting the theoretical proposition that financial openness stimulates financial sector development.

This study fills a crucial gap in the literature on the effects of financial openness on Ghana’s financial sector development. It focuses on Ghana, which liberalized its financial sector in 1988 as part of the overall economic reforms in 1983, and this justifies the starting point of this paper in 1990, as there are no adequate data before 1990. The study uses principal component analysis to construct an index that measures financial development. The study considers the recent financial crises in Ghana in 2017 and underscores the importance of understanding the link between financial openness and financial development, which becomes useful for policymakers and researchers studying financial system development in sub-Saharan Africa which includes Ghana.

The liberalization initiative commenced in India from 1991 onwards, replacing the four-decade long import substitution policy. The primary objective was to enhance the role of foreign and private investment, in line with the newly embraced outward-oriented growth model. The government had undertaken several policy initiatives since then, especially to strengthen the manufacturing sector which plays an important role in the economic development of any country. The current study evaluates the effects of the liberalization policy in India on industrial outcomes. Recent studies have found that when firm heterogeneity is present in trade models, reforms will lead to a decrease in the number of firms and a rise in their average size (Melitz, 2003). A dataset of 24 manufacturing industries had been used in the current study. We test empirically whether liberalization had led to a rise in the average size of establishments as stated in the literature. We also attempt to analyze the magnitude of trade costs in terms of the impact of reforms on wages and prices. The empirical analysis based on the difference-in-difference (DID) estimation method shows that on average, trade reforms do not lead to an increase in the real wages and average size of establishments. In addition, prices appear to increase in the long run due to liberalization, with potential ramifications.

The study evaluates the role of institutional framework and macroeconomic instability on financial market development among emerging economies.

The study uses panel data compiled from 32 countries from the sub-region of Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA), covering the period starting from 1996 to 2019. Empirical analyses were carried out using the two-step system generalized method of moments (TS-GMM) statistical framework.

Reviewed results suggest that institutional quality, effective governance and corruption control have a significant positive impact on financial market development among economies in the sub-region. Further empirical estimates show that macroeconomic risk and macroeconomic uncertainty have significant adverse effects on financial market development. Additionally, reported empirical estimates suggest that an improved institutional framework has the potential to lessen the adverse effect of macroeconomic instability on financial market development among economies in the sub-region.

The uniqueness of this empirical inquiry compared to related studies in the present literature stems from the fact that studies employing similar empirical approaches on the subject matter for economies in the sub-region are rare. Additionally, the analysis pursued in this study employs critical variables whose impact on financial market performance in the sub-region has not been examined per our review. These variables include indexes such as macroeconomic risk and institutional quality, which are unique to this study based on their construction; these indexes are generated using a principal component analysis procedure with different underlying variables compared to what may be found in the literature.

The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis on the economic relationship between trade openness and economic growth and to identify current developments, potential research area and future directions. The emphasis is on the identification of annual growth of publications, country-wise distribution, publication pattern, intellectual structure and cluster analysis of scientific production in this field.

This study used evaluative techniques, text mining approach and performance analysis to identify possible patterns and correlation and to measure the impact of authors/citations/scientific production. Further, this study used the bibliometric mapping to represent the structural features of scientific production. This study emphasized on identification of the research hotspots based on occurrence of indexed keywords, productive researchers and journals during 2000–2022. Further, cluster analysis is performed using VOS viewer to analyze the current dynamics and future direction of the association between trade openness and economic growth (Eck and Waltman, 2011). Also, co-citation analysis is used in this study to identify the relations among authors or journals or documents using citation data, whereas the bibliographic coupling/mapping is intended to analyze the citing documents. Similarly, co-word analysis is used to study the article keywords that are mainly used to assess the conceptual structure of a concerning subject.

Economic growth is a function of trade openness, and it is important to analyze the relationship between trade openness and economic growth. Trade openness tends to become more liberalized over time, to contribute more to economic growth. Empirical evidence suggested that there exists a strong association between trade openness and economic growth. Further, keyword timeline analysis illustrated that the linkage between trade openness and economic growth is current area of interest among researchers. As per bibliometric analysis, China, Pakistan and Malaysia are the three most prolific countries in the terms of published articles on this theme. However, the most influential publications based on h-index and citation on trade openness–economic growth relationship is produced by Turkey. Based on cluster analysis, this study suggests that researchers are currently working on trade openness–economic growth relationship with other variables such as FDI, financial development, labor force, environment degradation and carbon emission, while in future, researchers could work on variables such as technology and sustainable development.

There are some limitations of this study. The first limitation is the authors have used Scopus database, leaving the possibility for future research to use Web of Science, Google Scholar or other similar sources. The second limitation is that the authors have used search terms “trade openness “and “economic growth,” although research could be performed using synonyms or even relevant terms in other languages.

Cluster analysis suggested that researchers are currently working on trade openness–economic growth relationship with other variables such as FDI, financial development, labor force, environment degradation and carbon emission, while in future, researchers could work on variables such as technology and sustainable development. Therefore, this study identified the potential research area in this research domain.

To confirm the originality of this study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to combine bibliometric analysis and cluster analysis on trade openness–economic growth relationship. This study makes a comparison with phenomena/processes/events in contemporary economic and social reality in the field of trade openness and economic growth relationship.

This study aims to consider environmental sustainability, a global challenge under the preview of sustainable development goals, highlighting the significance of knowledge economy in attaining sustainable aggregate demand behavior globally. For this purpose, 155 countries that have data available from 1995 to 2021 were selected. The purpose of selecting these countries is to test the global responsibility of the knowledge economy to attain environmental sustainability.

Results are estimated with the help of panel quantile regression. The empirical existence of aggregate demand-based environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) was tested using non-linear tests. Moreover, principal component analysis has been incorporated to construct the knowledge economy index.

U-shaped aggregate demand-based EKC at global level is validated. However, environmental deterioration increases with an additional escalation after US$497.945m in aggregate demand. As a determinant, the knowledge economy is reducing CO₂ emissions. The knowledge economy has played a significant role in global responsibility, shifting the EKC downward and extending the CO₂ reduction phase for every selected country. Further, urbanization, energy intensity, financial development and trade openness significantly deteriorate the environmental quality.

This study contains the empirical existence of aggregate demand-based EKC. The role of the knowledge economy is examined through an index which is calculated by using four pillars of the knowledge economy (technology, innovations, education and institutions). This study is based on a combined panel of all the countries for which the data was available.

This study examines the extent to which regulatory policy uncertainty, macroeconomic risk, banking industry innovations, etc. influence variability in financial sector development among emerging economies in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA).

Data for the empirical inquiry were compiled from a sample of 25 economies from the subregion from 2010 to 2020. Empirical estimates examining the relationships noted above were carried out using the two-step system generalized method of moments estimation technique.

Results the empirical estimates suggest that regulatory policy uncertainty and macroeconomic risk adversely influence or constrain financial sector development among the economies examined in the study. Banking industry innovations on the other hand is found to positively influence the development of the financial sector in these economies. Furthermore, moderating empirical analysis suggests that effective governance positively moderates the relationship between banking industry innovations and financial development among economies in the subregion.

This study’s approach to the mechanics of financial development among economies in SSA is designed to offer different perspectives to those found in the existing literature on financial development in three fundamental ways. First, although the verification of the role of banking industry innovations in financial development may not be new, it is important to point out that the approach used in this study is based on an index for innovations with different constituents or principal components in its construction; making the variable significantly different from what has been examined in the literature. In addition, the review of regulatory policy uncertainty and macroeconomic risk (both variables are multifaceted constructs using the principal component analysis procedure) further brings into this study’s analysis, a different approach to examining conditions influencing variability in financial development among developing economies.

This paper aims to investigate the role of corruption and income inequality in three-dimensional sustainable development in the post-Soviet countries.

The methodology is based on dynamic panel regression with the fixed effects approach.

The authors' findings depict that increasing corruption and income inequality undermine sustainable development. Specifically, increasing corruption and income inequality negatively affect sustainable development. Moreover, unemployment and trade liberalization negatively impact sustainable development, whereas foreign direct investments (FDIs) positively affect sustainable development.

Policy implications enclose galvanizing strong institutions and redistributive policy mechanisms that the bottom income groups enjoy in promoting sustainable development to keep away the distressful phase of corruption and income inequality.

This is the first paper on corruption, income inequality and sustainable development in the post-Soviet countries employing a sustainable development index (SDI), which is calculated by considering three factors including economic, social and environmental development.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2023-0065

Trade of environmentally sensitive goods (ESGs) is often exposed to countries with less stringent regulations suggesting that those countries have comparative advantage in the polluting sector. The Group of Twenty (G20) members are among the highest polluters, globally. Different stringency policies are enacted time to time in G20 to control environment pollution. However, the impact of policy stringency on export performance of ESGs is seldom examined. The paper aims to address some of the issues concerning this matter.

The present study aims to address the short run and long-run association between Revealed Comparative Advantage of ESGs and Environmental Policy Stringency Index for the period of 1990–2019 in G20. Periodic fluctuations and time adjustment mechanism are also studied. Second Generation Panel Cointegration, Vector Error Correction, Impulse Response Function and Variance Decomposition methods are employed to address the objectives.

Result is evident that more exposure to stringent environmental regulations reduces the comparative advantage of ESGs in the long run. But there is no evidence of the short-run relationship between the variables. The possible reason could be that new regulations enacted prove fruitful in the long run.

The novelty of the study is to focus on inter linkages between stringency and global export competitiveness in G20, almost nonexistent in the past studies. The study also provides a road map to policymakers to find out potential ways for sustainable development by balancing environmental stringency measures and international trade.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-08-2022-0560