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The current chapter proposes a theoretical framework to assess the sustainability of economic growth in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States. The authors integrate insights from endogenous growth models and consider the unique socioeconomic characteristics of the GCC region to provide a comprehensive and tailored approach to understanding the determinants of economic growth and formulating effective policy measures to foster sustainable development and growth. This chapter highlights the environmental challenges faced by GCC; based on this, the authors suggested indicators to construct a theoretical framework (Economic Growth, Climatic Indicators, Energy Indicators, Social Indicators, and Economic Resources Indicators). The authors propose that policymakers and researchers in GCC States should take these factors into account when devising policies or conducting research aimed at fostering sustainable economic growth. Overall, this chapter presents significant insights for policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders involved in promoting the sustainable economic advancement of the GCC States.

The study examines whether the growth effect of government spending is contingent on the level of institutional environment prevalent in Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

The study adopts the more refined and more appropriate dynamic threshold panel by Seo and Shin (2016) and made applicable be Seo et al. (2019). The technique models a nonlinear asymmetric dynamics and cross-sectional heterogeneity simultaneously in a dynamic threshold panel data framework.

The results show that there is a threshold effect in the government spending-growth relationship. Specifically, the authors found that the impact of government spending on economic growth is positive and statistically significant only above a certain threshold level of institutional development. Below that threshold, the effect of government spending on growth is insignificant and negative at best. The findings suggest that government spending-growth nexus is contingent on the level of Institutional quality.

Unlike previous studies that adopt the linear interaction model which pre-impose a priori conditional restrictions, this study adopts the dynamic threshold panel framework which allows the lagged dependent variable and endogenous covariates.

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 study examines the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on employment and economic growth in Ghana and examines the role of technology in these relationships.

This study applied the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration and Granger causality tests to data from 1995 to 2017.

Based on the empirical analysis, the key findings are as follows: FDI does not affect economic growth or employment in Ghana. However, technology moderates the relationship between FDI and economic growth and FDI and employment in the short run. The study also finds that technology exerts a positive effect on economic growth in both short and long run, whereas trade has a significantly negative effect on economic growth in Ghana.

The greatest constraint that faced the authors is the nonavailability of data,.

The transfer of technology agreement enshrined in the GIPC Act should be made more robust and unambiguous, to make it a strict requirement for MNEs to be allowed to operate in Ghana. This increases Ghana's gains from FDI inflow.

The GIPC should tighten its monitoring regime so that MNEs do not exceed their expatriate employment quotas. This will ease the burden of unemployment among the youth in Ghana.

This study adds a new dimension to the literature on the impact of FDI on emerging economies by examining the role of technology in the association between FDI and growth, and FDI and employment.

Sequel to the results of the preceding chapter that depicted positive associations of credit with the indicators of growth and development, the present chapter aims at investigating the interrelationships of credit with GDP and HDI separately in a bivariate framework for the selected countries for the period 1990–2019. For this purpose, this chapter first develops a theoretical model in line with the Barro (1991) model where bank credit is introduced as a good institutional component of endogenous growth. Then, it goes for a time series exercise to establish the long-run relations and short-run dynamics for the pairs of variables, credit-GDP and credit-HDI, to justify the linkages between the financial sector and the real sector. The study arrives at mixed results across the countries. In many cases, credit has been identified to be strongly related to income and development indicators in the long run through cointegrated stable relationships. Furthermore, credit makes a causal influence on GDP and HDI in some developed countries whereas GDP becomes a causal factor to credit in some developing countries. It is thus recommended for further aggravation of the two sectors’ linkages under the patronisations of the governments and the monetary authorities of the countries to have high growth of income and development so that a part of the sustainable development goal can be achieved through the financial sector.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of imported inputs on firms' productivity in selected South Asian economies, namely Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Furthermore, this study explores the complementarity between firms' capabilities and imported inputs in an augmented productivity framework.

A dataset comprising 7117 manufacturing firms of selected South Asian economies was taken from the World Bank for 2013 and 2014. The empirical analysis was based on stochastic frontier models, the ordinary least square method and instrumental variable estimation techniques.

The empirical results show that imported inputs have positive and significant effects on the firms' productivity in the selected countries. Moreover, the study findings demonstrate that firms' capabilities play a complementary role in expanding the firms' production frontier.

The study outcomes suggest that reducing tariffs on imported inputs will enhance the firms' productivity in the selected emerging economies. However, the study further finds that the potential gain of imported inputs is conditional on the firm's capabilities. It implies that firms operating in these countries can improve their performance by allocating more resources to capabilities, such as workers’ training, management and internal R&D effort.

The existing literature on the subject is sceptical about the positive impact of imported inputs on firms' productivity in the case of developing countries. In this regard, the shortage of skilled labour and firms' capabilities are compelling rationales that need to be explored. Thus, the potential contribution of the study lies in explaining the moderating role of firm's capabilities operating in the selected emerging economies in the nexus of imported inputs and productivity.

Countries worldwide aim to improve their comparative advantages by efficiently using scarce resources for economic growth and development. While many studies have been conducted to measure intellectual capital at the firm's level, measuring it at the national level has been under-examined. In addition, while the important role of national intellectual capital in economic growth has been theoretically recognized in literature, this important link has largely been ignored in empirical analyses.

This study uses the newly developed index of national intellectual capital from Vo and Tran's (2022) study to examine its effects on national economic growth in the long run. The dynamic common correlated effects technique and the pooled mean group estimation are used on the sample of 23 economies in the Asia–Pacific region from 2000 to 2020.

Findings from this study confirm the positive and significant contribution of the national intellectual capital to economic growth in the region. The authors also find that, as a feedback effect, economic growth will also enhance and improve the accumulation of national intellectual capital.

The findings of this paper provide valuable evidence and implications for policymakers in managing and improving national intellectual capital in the Asia–Pacific region.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study to examine the impact of national intellectual capital on economic growth in the long run in the Asia–Pacific economies.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate empirically the impact of oil price fluctuations on the relationship between banking sector development and economic growth in oil-importing MENA countries.

The study used the newly developed panel autoregressive distributed lagged (ARDL) approach in order to address any potential endogeneity between research variables.

The empirical results show a unidirectional causality in the long run from oil price to both economic growth and banking sector development for oil-importing countries. Also, banking sector development not only leads directly to economic growth but also can play a moderator role in the oil price—economic growth nexus.

The study has two principal limitations. On the one hand, this study was conducted in a relatively limited sample of countries. On the other hand, the study did not consider others indicators for banking sector development and others macroeconomic variables.

The results found have imperative implications for banks' managers, regulators and researchers. Bank managers should be more concerned with the negative repercussions of oil price fluctuations on the development of their banks. The regulatory authorities must emphasize policies and strategies to further strengthen their banking sector in order to alleviate the negative influence of oil price shocks on economic growth. Researchers focused on finance-growth nexus must take into account the potential influence of oil price shocks.

The developed conceptual model allows examining to what extent the oil price fluctuations might affect the relationship between economic growth and banking sector development. This effect is neither evaluated nor clarified in the relevant literature.

The authors analyse a growth model to explain how economic fluctuations are primarily driven by productive capacities (i.e. capacity utilization driven by innovations and know-how) and productive inefficiencies.

This study’s methodology consists of the combination of the economic growth model, à la Solow–Swan, with a sigmoidal production function (in capital), which may explain growth, poverty traps or fluctuations depending on the relative levels of inefficiencies, productive capacities or lack of know-how.

The authors show that economies may experience economic growth, poverty traps and/or fluctuations (i.e. cycles). Economic growth is reached when an economy experiences both a low level of inefficiencies and a high level of productive capacities while an economy falls into a poverty trap when there is a high level of inefficiencies in production. Instead, the economy gets in cycles when there is a large level of the lack of know-how and low levels of productive capacity.

The authors conclude that more capital per capita (greater savings and investment) and greater productive capacity (with less lack of know-how) are the economic policy keys for an economy being on the path of sustained economic growth.

The main purpose of this study resides essentially in the development of a new tool to quantify the biomass in the bioreactor operating under steady state conditions.

Modeling is the most relevant tool for understanding the functioning of some complex processes such as biological wastewater treatment. A steady state model equation of activated sludge model 1 (ASM1) was developed, especially for autotrophic biomass (XBA) and for oxygen uptake rate (OUR). Furthermore, a respirometric measurement, under steady state and endogenous conditions, was used as a new tool for quantifying the viable biomass concentration in the bioreactor.

The developed steady state equations simplified the sensitivity analysis and allowed the autotrophic biomass (XBA) quantification. Indeed, the XBA concentration was approximately 212 mg COD/L and 454 mgCOD/L for SRT, equal to 20 and 40 d, respectively. Under the steady state condition, monitoring of endogenous OUR permitted biomass quantification in the bioreactor. Comparing XBA obtained by the steady state equation and respirometric tool indicated a percentage deviation of about 3 to 13%. Modeling bioreactor using GPS-X showed an excellent agreement between simulation and experimental measurements concerning the XBA evolution.

These results confirmed the importance of respirometric measurements as a simple and available tool for quantifying biomass.