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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of farmland renting-in on planted grain acreage.

A survey data of five counties were analyzed with the two-stage ordinary least squares model.

Households renting-in land trended to plant more maize, and the more land was rented by a household the more maize was planted, while wheat acreage showed non-response to farmland renting-in.

Overall, the analysis suggests that policy makers should be prepared for different changing trends of grain crop acreage across the nation as farmland transfer continues. Future research should pay attention to the effect of farmland transfer on agricultural productivity and rural household income growth.

As the Chinese Government is promoting larger-scale and more mechanized farms as a way of protecting grain security, it is important to understand whether farmland renting-in will reduce planted grain acreage. This study provides empirical evidence showing the answer to that question may differ across different regions and depend on the particular grain crop in question.

Despite the global resolves to curtail fossil fuel consumption (FFC) in favour of clean energies, several countries continue to rely on carbon-intensive sources in meeting their energy demands. Financial constraints and limited knowledge with regards to green energy sources constitute major setbacks to the energy transition process. This study therefore aims to examine the effects of financial development and human capital on energy consumption.

The empirical analysis is based on the system generalised method of moments (SGMM) for a panel of 134 countries from 1996 to 2019. The SGMM estimates conducted on the basis of three measures of energy consumption, notably fossil fuel, renewable energy as well as total energy consumption (TEC), provide divergent results.

While financial development significantly reduces FFC, its effect is positive though non-significant with regards to renewable energy consumption. Conversely, financial development has a positive and significant effect on TEC. Moreover, the results reveal that human capital development has an enhancing though non-significant effect on the energy transition process. In addition, the results reveal that resource rents have an enhancing effect on the energy transition process. However, when natural resources rents are disaggregated into various components (oil, coal, mineral, natural gas and forest rents), the effects on energy transition are divergent. Although our findings are consistent when the global panel is split into developed and developing economies, the results are divergent across geographical regions. Contingent on these findings, actionable policy implications are discussed.

The study complements extant literature by assessing nexuses between financial development, human capital and energy transition from a global perspective.

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.