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Empirical studies regarding the impact of the real exchange rate (RER) on economic growth are extensively available. However, the literature as a whole appears to report varying results, while the causes of such differences have not been analyzed systematically. The present study aims to fill the gap in the literature.

In this paper, the authors compile 543 empirical estimates from 51 studies of the exchange rate-growth nexus in order to meta-analyze its relationship. Meta-analysis allows the authors to quantitatively synthesize previous empirical studies and explain the variation in the results. This method also enables us to investigate the possibility of publication bias, as there is a tendency in research only to report results that are both statistically significant and show the expected signs.

After addressing publication bias and heterogeneity in the estimates, the meta-regression results show that RER depreciation (or undervaluation) genuinely favors economic growth. On average, RER depreciation has a greater impact on economic growth in developing countries than the developed ones. The study’s results imply that maintaining an undervalued RER could be favorable to spur economic growth, especially in developing countries.

Initially predominant in the medical literature, meta-analysis has been on a rising edge in economics. This progress has produced many systematic quantitative review analyses with continuously improved statistical-econometric practices related to economic variables. However, to the authors’ knowledge, no comprehensive meta-regression analysis of the relationship between exchange rate and economic growth has been conducted and published in any publicly accessible academic outlet. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature.

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.

This study aims to examine the effect of governance on the consumption of modern renewable energy in the East African Community (EAC), controlling for economic growth, trade openness and foreign direct investment (FDI).

The study relied on secondary data sourced from the World Development Indicators, World Governance Indicators and the International Energy Agency (IEA) for the EAC from 1996 to 2019. A panel Cross-Sectional Augmented Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) model and second-generation panel data models were employed in the analysis.

The findings indicate that poor governance and inadequate FDI are significantly responsible for the low level of modern renewable energy consumption (MREC) in the EAC. On the other hand, trade openness significantly enhances MREC, while GDP per capita has no significant effect on MREC.

The consumption of modern renewable energy sources (excluding the traditional use of biomass) and its determinants, as most studies focus on renewable energy consumption as a whole. The study also employed the panel CS-ARDL model and second-generation panel data models.

The concept of productivity is central to performance management and decision-making, although it is complex and multifaceted. This paper aims to describe a methodology based on the use of Big Data in a cluster analysis combined with a data envelopment analysis (DEA) that provides accurate and reliable productivity measures in a large network of retailers.

The methodology is described using a case study of a leading kitchen furniture producer. More specifically, Big Data is used in a two-step analysis prior to the DEA to automatically cluster a large number of retailers into groups that are homogeneous in terms of structural and environmental factors and assess a within-the-group level of productivity of the retailers.

The proposed methodology helps reduce the heterogeneity among the units analysed, which is a major concern in DEA applications. The data-driven factorial and clustering technique allows for maximum within-group homogeneity and between-group heterogeneity by reducing subjective bias and dimensionality, which is embedded with the use of Big Data.

The use of Big Data in clustering applied to productivity analysis can provide managers with data-driven information about the structural and socio-economic characteristics of retailers' catchment areas, which is important in establishing potential productivity performance and optimizing resource allocation. The improved productivity indexes enable the setting of targets that are coherent with retailers' potential, which increases motivation and commitment.

This article proposes an innovative technique to enhance the accuracy of productivity measures through the use of Big Data clustering and DEA. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no attempts have been made to benefit from the use of Big Data in the literature on retail store productivity.

The study aims to explore the validity of the modern renewable energy-environmental Kuznets curve (REKC) while considering the relevance of financial development in the consumption of modern renewable energy in East Africa Community (EAC). Modern renewable energy in this study includes all other forms of renewable energy except traditional use of biomass. The authors controlled for the effects of urbanization, governance, foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade openness.

Panel data of the five EAC countries of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda for the period 1996–2019 were used. The analysis relied on the use of the autoregressive distributed lag–pooled mean group (ARDL-PMG) model, and the data were sourced from the World Development Indicators (WDI), World Governance Indicators (WGI) and International Energy Agency (IEA).

The REKC hypothesis is supported for modern renewable energy consumption in the EAC region. Financial development positively and significantly affects modern renewable energy consumption, whereas urbanization, FDI and trade openness reduce modern renewable energy consumption. Governance is insignificant.

The concept of the REKC, although explored in other contexts such as aggregate renewable energy and in other regions, has not been used to explain the consumption of modern renewable energy in the EAC.

This study aims to comprehensively investigate the relationship between government subsidies and innovation performance in Chinese enterprises listed on the SSE STAR Market.

An unbalanced sample, covering 285 observations in 215 enterprises listed on the SSE STAR Market from 2019 to 2020, was used to explore the relationships between government subsidies, R&D investment, CEO shareholding and innovation performance. Counterfactual analysis is added for robustness testing.

Empirical evidence confirms that government subsidies have an inverted U-shaped relationship with R&D investment and innovation performance. Meanwhile, R&D investment is a mediating variable between government subsidies and innovation performance. Moreover, CEO shareholding plays a moderating role between government subsidies and R&D investment. The higher the CEO ownership, the steeper the inverted U-shaped relationship.

The government should introduce a dynamic mechanism to reasonably control subsidy amounts and strengthen the supervision of subsidy use. Enterprise managers should be aware of how incentives affect the firm’s innovation and implement a coordinated development of government subsidy policies and internal enterprise governance.

This study adds new empirical evidence for the relationship between government subsidies and enterprise innovation performance. The risk incentive provided by stock options is an important micro mechanism to compensate for the lack of government subsidies. The study identifies ways to promote firm innovation based on the synergistic effect of internal and external mechanisms.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of board characteristics on environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure in the energy industry of emerging economies.

The authors adopt the Bloomberg ESG rating to measure the extent of ESG disclosure using a sample of 1,260 observations from BRICS emerging economies. Multiple regression techniques were used to estimate the effect of board characteristics on ESG disclosures of a sample Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) listed companies between 2010 and 2019.

The authors find a relatively low (at 37%) level of ESG disclosure among the sampled firms and a relatively high degree of variability. The authors also find that board gender diversity, board composition and board diligence are positively related to the level of ESG disclosure while the study documents no relationship between board size and ESG disclosure.

The study’s findings highlight the importance of corporate board attributes in influencing strategic decisions such as the level of ESG disclosure and the findings may be useful to regulators, policymakers and investors in making informed investment decisions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first attempts at examining the impact of board characteristics on ESG disclosure in the energy industry in emerging economies. The paper provides new evidence on the relationship between board characteristics (BC) and ESG disclosure in the energy industry of emerging BRICS countries within a panel multi-country research setting.

This study aims to re-examine the corruption and sustainable development nexus in Africa and offer a contemporary analytical review and analysis of that relationship in the region.

Drawing on the available and accessible relevant data from credible sources, this work quantifies, outlines and analyses the nexus between corruption and sustainable development, as it applies primarily to sub-Saharan Africa. It uses the relevant disaggregated data and also complements that with the results of reliable empirical studies to further cross-reference and demonstrate the corruption and sustainable development nexus.

It is shown that corruption in Africa continues to be negatively associated with sustainable development objectives and that, in turn, will continue to affect the continent’s progress in achieving sustainable development. Undoubtedly, corruption is very damaging to economies across all nations and regions. However, in Africa, this impact on sustainable development has been particularly severe and ongoing. Consequently, the views expressed several decades ago of corruption being able to grease the wheels and potentially contribute to economic development is not valid and, in fact, has been severally discredited over the years.

The main value of the paper is the insights it provides, and with cross-reference to the empirical literature and time series data, on the corruption and sustainable development nexus in Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the global competitiveness of the top ten wooden furniture exporting countries with several approaches and to test the effect of export prices (EXPRs) on the global competition.

Countries' competitiveness levels were measured with revealed comparative advantage (RCA), normalised RCA (NRCA), revealed symmetric comparative advantage (RSCA) and trade balance index. Furthermore, panel regression analysis techniques were used to test the effects of EXPR on RCA, NRCA and RSCA in the wooden furniture industry (WFI).

Although the comparative advantage approaches give different results, the global competitiveness of Poland and Vietnam is at a high level in all approaches. Canada has been the country with the weakest global competitiveness in all approaches. According to the results of the analysis, EXPRs positively affect all the competitive advantage indexes. As a result, the competitiveness of the WFI is affected by the non-price factors instead of the EXPR.

The framework allows us to measure and illustrate the export competitiveness of the WFI and permits a global comparison. Similar analyses can be made for different labour-intensive sectors. In addition, analysis can be made to identify non-price factors for the WFI sector. Thus, more specific inferences can be made.

This study is useful for policymakers, government officials, the industry associations and the company executives to assess their export competitiveness in the WFI. Thus, they can determine whether to shift scarce resources to this industry or other industries. In addition, this study may affect the price competition policy of the sector representatives in the global market.

This study deals with the competitiveness of the WFI with different approaches. And this study determines the importance of price for global competition in this sector.

This study provides empirical evidence on the impact of the Panama Canal expansion (PCE) on the economies of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries, particularly in light of the emergence of larger container ships such as neo-Panamax and post-Panamax vessels.

This study uses the Bayesian structural time Series (BSTS) model to evaluate the economic effects of the PCE on 21 countries within the LAC region. It utilized the World Bank's gross domestic product (GDP) figures between 2000 and 2019 as the primary variable, alongside the human development index (HDI) (X1), container throughput (TEU) (X2) and unemployment rates (UNEMPL) (X3) covariates. This allowed a precise and robust approach to analyzing time series data while accounting for uncertainties and allowing the inclusion of various components and external factors.

The findings revealed that the PCE has a positive and statistically significant impact on most countries within the Caribbean Transshipment Triangle, ranging from 9.2% in Belize to 46% in Cuba. This suggests that the causal effect of the PCE on regional economies was not confined to any specific type of economy or geographical location within the LAC region. Where the growth rates were statistically insignificant, primarily in some Latin American countries, it coincided with countries that are primarily driven by exports and service industries, where bulk and oil tanker vessels are likely to be the main carriers for exports rather than container vessels.

The practical implications of this research are crucial for various stakeholders in the maritime industry and economic planning. The factors influencing economic growth resulting from investing in maritime activities are vital for decision-makers to create policies that lead to positive outcomes and sustainable development in regions and countries with flourishing maritime industries. The methodology and findings have significant implications for governments, managers, professionals, policy-makers and investors.