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The study makes an attempt to understand the regional state of depletion of natural capital stock based on the World Bank's recent data on natural resource depletion by following comparative growth analysis using growth accounting method and exploratory econometric approach. The study also considers two regions namely South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa for comparative analysis. Although the extent of protected areas is increasing in different regions of the world, the extent of forest land areas is declining in different regions. The study also intends to determine the role of deforestation and land-use change, habitat fragmentation, encroachment, rapid population growth, and urbanization in explaining cross-country variations of natural resource depletion. Besides, it assesses the temporal movement of this natural resource depletion for the most vulnerable countries, namely low-income economies. Results show that the two major regions of low-income countries do exhibit depletion of natural capital stock such as agricultural land, forests, and subsoil assets in per capita terms. These results have important implications for poverty reduction and fulfillment of Sustainable development goals (SDGs) of low-income countries.

This study intends to explore the impact of World Trade Organization (WTO) which came into existence from January 1, 1995, on the export share of developing counties in the world exports of all goods together in US$, that is, in global merchandise trade. This study endogenously determines the structural break in changing export share of developing countries and how are they related to the major changes in the multilateral trading systems of international trade, in particular, the introduction of the WTO by following a multiple breakpoint analysis due to Bai–­Perron. In this context, it would be worthwhile to note that the shift toward more export-oriented strategies by a large number of developing countries has accelerated the growth of LDC exports. This study also compares the changing share of merchandise exports and trade in commercial ­services for developing countries and the LDCs in the Post-WTO regime. The ­authors follow a univariate time-series exploratory analysis to understand the trend in world export shares of all goods and commercial services for different regions of the developing world and demonstrate the potential of these regions in the expansion of trade. The study, while evaluating the impact of WTO in changing export share in terms of structural change analysis, enables us to understand the role tariff cut in the developed countries on the imports from developing countries. This study also observes increasing inequality in terms of export share among different regions of the developing world.

The economic growth of any country depends largely on the entrance to international capital inflows, that is, external investment and its optimum allotment to components of different economic sectors. In several ways, foreign direct investment (FDI) helps by creating employment opportunities and rapid economic growth in emerging countries through capital flows in the developed countries and under developed countries. Many factors are affecting the FDI inflows in emerging countries among such determinants environmental issues are play a crucial role. Pollution control, air cleaner, water cleanness, etc., are the part of the environmental regulation in any country. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission and sulphur dioxide (SO₂) emission are major components of air pollution that have been widely used in empirical studies. The study intends to explore the impact of environmental regulations on FDI inflows in emerging countries along with governance factors and the macroeconomic fundamentals like per capita power consumption, trade openness, per capita GDP, etc. Based on the statistical data of 15 emerging countries from 2000 to 2015, the study follows the static panel data approach to empirically find the impact of environmental issues on FDI inflows. The results reveal that significant bonding realise between environmental regulations and FDI inflows in emerging countries. Based on the statistical evaluation however best our knowledge FDI is more attractive where lower regulations are established. For sake of simplicity environmental regulations are crucial to the multinational corporations (MNCs) for investment.

Adoption of digital technology at different levels of economic activity is an important indicator of development. Countries are adopting digital technology at business and government levels to increase efficiency and accountability of service delivery to appropriate user groups. Many countries are using digital technology in banking, education, and many other sectors and recasting the relationship among customers, workers, and employers. The digital transformation progressively changes productivity across all sectors and industries. The empirical investigation shows that mainly the role of per capita income (state of living) and supply-side factors explain cross-country variations in Digital Adoption Index (DAI) in business using a static panel data model with fixed effect (FE) approach for 169 countries over the period 2014–2016. In this context, this study makes an attempt to understand the state of digital adoption in business across 169 countries in 2016 using World Bank data. The empirical results state that only major variable like labour force are positively and statistically significant with DAI across the countries. Although there are caveats that the International Monetary Fund has made about the digital economy, they state that we should think carefully about how to devise policies that will allow us to fully exploit the digital revolution’s benefits while minimizing job dislocation.

The advent of information technology and the consequent access to Internet has led to significant changes in marketing practice where e-marketing has been the natural outcome of these technological changes and marketing innovations. For modernization and digital formation in India, marketing perception has been changing continually (“All business growth can only happen if business learners faster than the rate at which its customer changes” – William Charnock and Jonny Langden). E-marketing is currently the better element of the marketing mix. It has substantial benefits to the customer, marketers, and in society. Conscious customers have been increasing their purchase through e-marketing as it has a lot of benefits. It has opened a huge business opportunity for marketers. E-marketing is now tapping new markets. This paper is aimed at investigating the changing consumer perception and environment of e-marketing in rural India for consumer durables based on a primary survey. The primary data are collected from 200 households selected randomly in Howrah and Hooghly districts of South Bengal. We have used the chi-square tests to study the role of several demographic factors on e-marketing behavior. We have observed that demographic factors such as gender, family income, and education have an impact on e-marketing. This study also identifies the problems faced by rural customers with reference to payment, goods checking, language, etc., and the problems faced by marketers. In conclusion, appropriate suggestions have been made in this regard.

Financial sustainability in emerging market economies crucially depends on stable foreign capital inflows as these countries lack adequate domestic capital and sophisticated technology. This study attempts to examine the impact of major political risk factors in the emerging market economies along with basic economic fundamentals such as institutional variables like per capita electric consumption, trade openness, and real rate of interest. We have followed a static panel data approach in studying the impact of these crucial variables in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows in 15 major emerging economies for the period 2000–2014. Risk perceptions, i.e., political risk data, have been collected from the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) provided by the Political Risk Services (PRS) Group. In our research purpose, we have considered dependent variable as FDI inflows for 15 emerging countries during the period 2000–2014, which are drawn from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, 2014, 2015) FDI database. Our results demonstrate that there are six subcomponents of risk perception (political risk) which are statistically significant in explaining variation in FDI inflows of the major emerging countries. The results show that government stability, socioeconomic conditions, religious tension, and bureaucracy quality have a positive impact on FDI inflows of emerging countries, whereas internal conflict and law and order have a negative impact on FDI inflows of these countries. Stable government is more attractive to foreign investors. Again, an improvement in the socioeconomic conditions is positively related with FDI inflows in emerging countries. Decreasing bureaucracy leads to a reduction in corruption, and assists expanding FDI flows in the emerging country.