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Might a country’s economic growth performance differ depending on the evolution of its human capital? This paper aims to consider education as a channel for human capital improvement and then for economic growth. The authors hypothesize the existence of a threshold for education, after which point the characteristics of economic growth change.

To address this question, the authors turn from a linear framework to a nonlinear one by applying smooth transition specifications.

This empirical analysis for Spain points to the existence of nonlinearities in the relationship between education and economic growth at country level, for both secondary and tertiary education. Next, as different patterns emerge in different regions, the authors provide a regional analysis for a number of representative Spanish regions. The results show that both secondary and tertiary education matter for economic growth and that nonlinearities in this relationship should be taken into account.

What is learnt from using Smooth Transition Regression models for the education-economic growth link is that the educational level of the population can be understood as a source of nonlinearities in the economic activity of a country (and of a region). Thus, depending on national and regional educational levels, economic growth behaves differently.

Although the importance of nonlinearities has been identified, linearity is usually assumed in this field of the literature. This paper calls into question the linearity assumption by using time series techniques for 1971-2013 in Spain, an OECD country, and testing whether the results at country level hold for different regions within Spain as a robustness check.

Based on the hypothesis of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between environmental pollutants (as measured by CO₂ emissions) and GDP for India, over the period 1980–2012. The presence of an inverted “U” shape relationship is examined while controlling for factors such as the degree of trade openness, foreign direct investment, oil prices, the legal system and industrialization.

To verify whether the EKC follows a linear, quadratic or polynomial form, autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach for cointegration with structural breaks is adopted. The annual time series data for carbon emissions (CO₂), economic growth (GDP), industrial development (industrialization), foreign direct investment and trade openness have been obtained from World Development Indicators online database. Crude oil price (international price index) for the period is collected from the International Monetary Fund. Data for total petroleum consumption are collected from the US Energy Information Agency. Data for economic freedom variables are from the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom Index's online database.

The findings support the existence of inverted U-shaped EKC in the short-run, but not in the long-run. A linear monotonic relationship has also been estimated in select model specifications. Additionally, trade openness has been estimated to reduce emissions in models, which incorporate FDI. Else, where significant, its impact on carbon emissions is adverse. A rise in fuel price leads to reduction in carbon emissions across model specifications. Further, the lower size of government degrades the environment both in the long-run and short-run.

Given the existence of the pollution haven hypothesis, wherein more trade and foreign direct investments cause environmental degradation, the paper proposes formulation of appropriate regulatory mechanisms that are environmentally friendly. Additionally, India's new economic policies, favoring liberalization, privatization and globalization, reinforces the need to strengthen environmental regulations.

Incorporation of economic freedom as measured by the “Size of Government” in the EKC model is unique. “Size of Government” deserves a special mention. The rationale for including this explanatory variable is to understand whether countries with lower government size are more polluting. After all, theory does suggest that goods and services, which have higher social cost vis-à-vis private cost, shall be overproduced in economies that adopt more market-friendly policies, necessitating government intervention. In the study, size of government is measured as per the definition and methodology adopted by Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of the World Index.

This paper considers a broader concept of economic integration in order to analyze the impact of integration on economic growth within the context of the knowledge-driven endogenous economic growth model. The equilibrium growth rate derived from the model implies that while increasing the flow of ideas from integration speeds up the long-run rate of growth, impact of trade liberalization is complicated and not decisive. The overall impact of economic integration on • economic growth depends on various aspects of the economy which are related to its R&D investment such as knowledge spillovers, and industrial and market structures. The results of this paper suggest that policy makers need to consider international economic policy, market structure and industrial policy all at once, with special emphasis on the effect affirms' R&D activities when making decisions on economic integration.

The government of Korea considers the promotion of Free Trade Agreements (FTA) as necessary to develop its economy into an open trading nation. As for the countries with which the Korean government is actively investigating possible FTAs, there are Japan, Singapore, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN,) and Mexico. For the time-being, the FTA with Japan seems to be a critical one in practicing Korea s FTA policy. Recently, Korean industries show negative positions against a Korea-Japan FTA, with strong opposition from the labor union insisting that it is evident that Korea will sustain damages in the short-run and the dynamic (long-term) benefits are still ambiguous and uncertain. Regardless of whether their argument is correct or not, it will be difficult for Korea to conclude the FTA with Japan unless there is concrete confidence of balanced economic gains through the FTA between the two countries.

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between Islamic finance for entrepreneurship activities and economic growth in Malaysia within the model of endogenous growth.

This study applied a parametric analysis represented by vector autoregression (VAR) Granger causality and a non-parametric analysis represented in the bootstrapped quantile regression to examine the effect of Islamic finance for entrepreneurship activities on economic growth within the model of endogenous growth. This paper used a sample of all Islamic banks working in Malaysia covering a period from 2014 first quarter until 2019 third quarter (2014Q1–2019Q3).

The findings demonstrated that Islamic finance for entrepreneurship activities are promoting economic growth in Malaysia which indicates that Islamic finance is a vital contributor to economic growth through financing entrepreneurial domains small and medium-sized enterprises.

The analysis in this paper would fill the literature gap by investigating the link between Islamic finance for entrepreneurship activities and economic growth within the model of endogenous growth in Malaysia as this study serves as a guide for the researchers and decision-makers to the necessity of merging Islamic finance as a major player in the economy to finance the entrepreneurial domain which contributes to economic growth.

This study is the first that investigates the relationship between Islamic finance for entrepreneurship activities and economic growth empirically using the causality and quantile regression within a new theoretical approach over the model of endogenous growth to provide a proven valuable experiment from Malaysia concerning Islamic finance for the entrepreneurial domain which promotes economic growth.