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Debt sustainability and the growing level of external debt in sub-Saharan African (SSA) continue to be significant research priorities. This study aims to examine the corruption-external debt nexus in SSA economies and whether different levels of corruption better explain this relationship.

The panel quantile regression approach was applied to account for the heterogeneous effect of the exogenous variables on external debts. The research covers 30 years of panel data from 30 selected SSA economies for the period spanning from 2000 to 2021.

The empirical findings of the regression analysis demonstrate the heterogeneous influences of the exogenous variables on external debt. While there was a positive impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows on external debts, corruption established a negative relationship with external debt from the 10th to the 80th quantile. The findings showed a positive link between trade openness and external debt, while they also showed a negative relationship between gross fixed capital formation and external debt.

It is implied that corruption “sands the wheels” of external debts in the selected SSA countries. Therefore, the amount of external debt that flows into SSA is inversely correlated with corruption activity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to use panel quantile regression to analyze how corruption affects debt dynamics across different levels of debt, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of how corruption affects debt dynamics. Based on the findings of this study, SSA countries should create enabling environments to attract FDI inflows and to continue to drive domestic revenue mobilization and capital so as to be less dependent on external debts.

Human capital is a portfolio of rich skills that the labour possesses. Human capital has attracted significant attention from scholars. Nevertheless, empirical findings on the utility of human capital have often been divided. To address the research gap in the literature, the authors attempt to understand how human capital plays a significant role in financial development and economic growth nexus.

The authors rely on secondary data published by the World Bank. The authors use econometric tools such as the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) model and related statistical tests to study the relationship between human capital, India's financial growth and gross domestic product (GDP) growth.

Study findings suggest that human capital and financial development contribute significantly to economic growth. Further, the authors found that human capital has a positive and significant moderating effect on the path of joining financial development and economic growth.

The study contributes to the human capital debate. Despite the rich body of literature, the study based on World Bank data confirms the previous findings that investment in human capital is always useful for the financial and economic growth of the nation.

This paper reveals some unique findings regarding effect of financial development and economic growth nexus which opens the window of new dimension to think about their nexus. It also provides a different pathway to foster the economic growth by using human capital and financial development as together, especially in India.

This paper analyzes the direct effect of financial development and the mediating impact of financial development through foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign aid and trade on economic growth for all Asian countries.

A fixed-effect model with Driscoll–Kraay panel corrected estimators was employed to find the direct and mediating impact of financial developments on growth for all 47 Asian economies from 1980 to 2020. The bootstrapped panel-quantile regression (BPQR) model is used to check how this effect varies for different income groups of countries.

The results demonstrated that financial development positively impacts countries' economic growth. The interaction effect of financial development with FDI, foreign aid and foreign trade negatively impacts economic growth. The BPQR results showed that FDI and foreign aid help in the growth of lower quantile economies; however, the impact is negative for middle- and upper-income countries. Trade impacts growth positively for all the quantiles of economies.

The results suggest that the Asian economies must continue to provide thrust on the financial development of their own countries to achieve better growth. It also implied that the dependence on external finance is good for low-income countries and not advisable for middle- and upper-income countries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first to provide empirical evidence on analyzing both the direct and interaction effect of financial development on economic growth by considering all the Asian economies.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2022-0587

This paper examines the nexus between supply chain social capital (relational social capital and structural social capital), supply chain responsiveness (operations system responsiveness and supplier network responsiveness) and firm performance. Additionally, the study examines the mediating role of supply chain responsiveness on the relationship between supply chain social capital and firm performance.

The authors test their hypotheses on a sample of 120 firms operating in Ghana. The measurement model and hypothesized paths were assessed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The findings revealed that structural social capital had a significant direct effect on firm performance, but relational social capital did not. It was also revealed that both relational and structural social capital have significant effects on operations system responsiveness and supplier network responsiveness. Additionally, operations system responsiveness fully mediated the effect of relational social capital on firm performance and partially mediated the effect of structural social capital on firm performance. Supplier network responsiveness, on the other hand, partially mediated the effect of both relational and structural social capital on firm performance.

This study contributes to the limited literature on supply chain social capital by unearthing the mechanisms through which supply chain social capital enhances firm performance. Specifically, the study demonstrates the intervening role of operations system responsiveness and supplier network responsiveness in the supply chain social capital–firm performance link.

Issues related to economic development and growth are oft discussed to illustrate the health of a nation. However, such development is constrained by the inequality parameter of the representative society. Again, economic fluctuations arising from several crises may hinder the representative nation from getting on a smooth path to development. Now, augmentation of crises along with the presence of inequality may trigger economic vulnerabilities, leading to unsustainable economic development. Against this backdrop, we initially frame a theoretical model to capture the above-mentioned issues and try to derive plausible economic interpretations for the same. To verify the same in a more robust manner, we consider a panel of 30 developing countries from Africa, spanning the time period 1980–2020. Both the health status and the education status of our panel of countries are used to explore the sustainability issue in the presence of income inequality. All data have been collected from the World Development Indicators (WDI) and Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) (Table 21.1

Variables Description.

Most emerging economies have made conscious efforts through policy initiatives to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). However, a significant obstacle to FDI inflow has been the prevalence of corruption in the host country. This study, therefore, aims to examine whether there is an optimum corruption value that results in threshold effects of corruption on FDI.

To achieve this objective, this study used Hansen’s (1999) panel threshold regression (PTR) model by using a panel data of 30 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 2000 to 2021.

This study finds that the nexus between corruption and FDI has a single threshold effect, with a 5.37% optimum corruption threshold value. At this threshold value, corruption affects FDI negatively. Any corruption value that is below the threshold value also elicits a negative corruption–FDI relationship. Despite having a negative relationship when the corruption value is above the optimum corruption threshold, it is not statistically significant.

The implication of the results is that it is deleterious to use corrupt practices to draw FDI to SSA nations.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first in the corruption–FDI nexus literature to use Hansen’s PTR model to estimate an optimal corruption threshold. The authors recommend that policymakers in the selected SSA countries reconsider the use of corruption to attract FDI because there is an optimal corruption threshold that could impact FDI in the host country.

Emerging economies have been highlighted as an important growth source of the global economy. However, this group of countries has not received enough academic attention yet. Therefore, this study aims to identify the impact of research and development (R&D) expenditure on economic growth in emerging economies.

The theoretical framework of the production function is applied to quantitatively analyse the impact of R&D expenditure on economic growth with a sample of 29 emerging economies in the period between 1996 and 2019.

The panel cointegration test confirms the existence of long-run cointegration relationships between economic growth and independent variables in these emerging economies. Besides, the estimated results show that the national R&D expenditure has positive effects on economic growth from both direct and interaction dimensions. This evidence has filled the empirical research gap in the R&D-growth nexus in the case of emerging economies. Finally, while gross capital and education have positive impacts on growth, corruption has a harmful effect on economic growth in these countries.

The results highlight that policymakers should enhance R&D expenditure and R&D activities as the key national development strategy. The investment in R&D not only helps emerging economies avoid the middle-income trap but also pushes these countries to successfully join the group of developed countries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is among the first to examine the impact of R&D expenditure on economic growth with a homogeneous sample of emerging economies. The results are obviously helpful for policymakers to use R&D as the key development strategy for supporting economic growth in emerging economies in the future.

This article aims to investigate how institutional characteristics affect the level of financial development of economies collectively and compare between developed and undeveloped economies.

A dynamic panel with 131 countries, including developed and developing ones, was utilized; the estimators of the generalized method of moments system (GMM system) model were selected because they have econometric characteristics more suitable for analysis, providing superior statistical precision compared to traditional linear estimation methods.

The results from the full panel suggest that concrete and well-defined institutions are important for financial development, confirming previous research, with a more limited scope than the present work.

Limitations of this research include the availability of data for all countries worldwide, which would make the research broader and more complete.

A panel of countries was used, divided into developed and developing countries, to analyze the impact of institutional variables on the financial development of these countries, which is one of the differentiators of this work. Another differentiator of this research is the presentation of estimates in six different configurations, with emphasis on the GMM system model in one and two steps, allowing for comparison between results.

This study empirically examines the impact of climate change and agricultural research and development (R&D) as well as their interaction on agricultural productivity in 12 selected Asian and Pacific countries over the period of 1990–2018.

Various estimation methods for panel data, including Fixed Effects (FE), the Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) and two-step System Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) were used.

Results show that both proxies of climate change – temperature and precipitation – have negative impacts on agricultural productivity. Notably, agricultural R&D investments not only increase agricultural productivity but also mitigate the detrimental impact of climate change proxied by temperature on agricultural productivity. Interestingly, climate change proxied by precipitation initially reduces agricultural productivity until a threshold of agricultural R&D beyond which precipitation increases agricultural productivity.

The findings imply useful policies to boost agricultural productivity by using R&D in the context of rising climate change in the vulnerable continent.

This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, this study examines how climate change affects agricultural productivity in Asian and Pacific countries – those are most vulnerable to climate change. Second, this study assesses the role of R&D in improving agricultural productivity as well as its moderating effect in reducing the harmful impact of climate change on agricultural productivity.

Introduction: India has the 15th-largest domestic natural gas consumption (NGC), critical to sustainable economic growth. Promoting natural gas will have a crucial impact on production in all industries.

Purpose: This research gives an overview of NGC and gross domestic product (GDP) in India from 1990 to 2021 and investigates the association and nature of causality between NGC and GDP in India.

Methodology: For the years 1990 through 2021, we used annual statistics from the NGC and the GDP of India. Both research variables data have been taken from the World Bank Indicator.

Findings: There is no causality and correlation between natural gas and GDP in India.

Practical Implications: Based on the research, the Government of India can create different policies for substituting natural gas for other energy sources to have a healthier impact on a sustainable environment in the short and long term. In the future, researchers can work on environmental degradation and GDP.