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Rejecting building information modeling (BIM) can negatively impact the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industries. While BIM is trending globally, its implementation in post-conflict low-income economies is still limited. The purpose of this paper is to identify the critical factors for implementing BIM in a post-conflict low-income economy, using Afghanistan as a case study.

This study identifies potential affecting factors for BIM implementation through reviewing existing literature and interviewing AEC professionals in Afghanistan. Then, the factors are inserted into a questionnaire survey and disseminated with Afghanistan’s AEC practitioners. The collected data was analyzed to determine the critical factors. Also, the underlying relationships between the critical factors were established through factor analysis.

A total of 11 critical factors are affecting BIM implementation in Afghanistan. From those, nine factors can be grouped into the following three components: technological, environmental and organizational. Two factors, “cost-benefit of implementing BIM” and “market demand for BIM,” are recurring in low- and middle-income economies. Conversely, the “presence of appropriate projects to implement BIM” is the unique critical factor for Afghanistan that might affect other post-conflict low-income economies.

This study focuses on affecting factors for BIM implementation in post-conflict low-income economies, using Afghanistan as a reference rather than other types of economies that have been widely studied.

The purpose of this paper is to simulate the indirect and direct effects of remittances in developing countries.

The paper estimates a dynamic macroeconomic model and estimates the short‐run and long‐run dynamic multiplier effects of hypothetical temporary changes in remittances, as well as simulates the permanent effects of observed remittances.

The results indicate positive multiplier effects in general, and they also reveal a substantial variability across income categories and regions. The results indicate that low‐income economies are more inclined to spend their incomes on consumption and investments than middle‐income economies and, therefore, have a higher short‐run potential gain from receiving remittances. Low‐income economies typically reside in Sub‐Saharan Africa, whereas middle‐income economies are mainly found in East Europe, Latin America and North Africa and the Middle East. However, actual gains from remittances are highest in lower middle‐income economies because these countries receive more remittances. Generally, the short‐run effects are higher than the long‐run effects due to a sustained dependence of imported goods and services.

The paper analyzes the effects of remittances on components in aggregate demand.

The results support the World Bank's current policy recommendation that remittances should be promoted.

The paper corrects the algebraic solution for dynamic multiplier effects in Glytsos's work, written in 2005, and estimates the model for a macroeconomic panel containing 115 developing countries. The paper considers the effects of the net flows of remittances rather than of inflows only.

The paper offers the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of dynamics of economic growth slowdown for India at the sub-national level covering the period 1993–2013. In light of India’s regional diversity and variation in terms of gross regional domestic product (GRDP) per capita, the purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the growth dynamics at the sub-national level. The paper aims to answer two questions: first, are determinants of economic slowdown likely to differ across income groups? Second, what are the probabilities that the sub-national economies in India will experience a growth slowdown in the near future?

The paper undertakes a comprehensive analysis of growth slowdown for 106 Asian developing economies encompassing the national economies in ASEAN and the sub-national economies in Greater China, Indonesia and India. To be sure, the authors are not making any direct comparison to countries at different stages of economic development; rather, the comparison is between economies/sub-national economies that fall in the same income category. The authors construct income group-specific logistic model to identify the relevant determinants of growth slowdown and use Bayesian model averaging techniques as a robustness check. The authors also compute economy-specific predictive probabilities of growth slowdown over the period 2012–2017.

The empirical results show that a growth slowdown in various income groups tends to be associated with different sets of determinants, although broadly, across all income groups, the occurrence of growth slowdown is positively associated with higher GRDP per capita. The average predictive probability of growth slowdown for India’s sub-national economies is 0.43, indicating that, on average, India’s sub-national economies have a 43 per cent chance of experiencing growth slowdown in the 2012–2017 period. Overall, the prospects of the sub-national economies of India are less worrying than that of Greater Chinese economies but bleaker than the outlook for economies in ASEAN and Indonesia.

The research contributes to the understandings of growth dynamics, especially the issue of growth slowdown, in India. This paper differs from the existing literature on growth dynamics by being India centric and analysing the issue of growth slowdown at the sub-national level. Despite a steady increase in the level of GRDP per capita for the sub-national economies of India since 1993, significant disparities still exist across economies. Identifying determinants of growth slowdown and subsequently computing predictive probabilities serves as early warning signs for policy-makers and generates insights on how development policy can be shaped.

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 investigates the tax evasion practices in a lower-middle income economy in South Asia, with specific reference to Bangladesh (which is the only economy within South Asia that had consistent 6% and above gross domestic product (GDP) growth from 2011 to 2013). This study adopted mixed methodology (documentary analyses and a focus group interviews with 20 participants) to reach the overall objective of the research. Using Hofstede et al.’s (2010) cultural theory, the contribution of the study is that the cultural dimension itself cannot correspond to the causes of tax evasion, the other institutional factors (e.g., political connectedness in both private and public sectors, multinational companies (MNC)’s role and corruption, and a lack of public sector accountability and enforcement) are needed to complement the causes of tax evasion. The second major contribution is that Hofstede’s last two dimensions (i.e., short-term and restraint society) can correspond to the preliminary four dimensions (i.e., uncertainty avoidance (UA), masculinity, power distance (PD), and individualism). A restraint society such as Bangladesh is short-term oriented and has established corruption norms and secretive culture. There is also a perception by corporate business that the tax system as unfair and this has major consequences for the poor and the level of trust between the tax authorities and the taxpayers. This study also questions Hofstede’s model application in other developing economies with military and democracy political regimes. The major policy implications include Income Tax Ordinance, the reform of tax administration and enforcement. The novelty of this study rests in the fact that the findings may well inform local and international policymakers (e.g., World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the Asian Development Bank (ADB)) regarding how to tackle tax evasion practices in lower-middle income economies like Bangladesh. Further, it fills a gap in the literature exploring tax evasion in a lower-middle income economy – in this case, Bangladesh.

A comparison of international construction labour productivity (CLP) is carried out by the conventional use of exchange rates to convert national construction output to a common base currency. Such measurement is always distorted by price-level differences between countries and therefore the purpose of this paper is to adopt a purchasing power parities (PPPs) approach, which eliminates price-level differences, as an alternative means of comparing CLP.

PPP construction expenditure data from the World Bank’s International Comparison Programme 2011 and employment statistics maintained by the International Labour Organization are used to generate the CLP of 93 matching economies. A one-way analysis of variance is conducted to evaluate the relationship between the development status and the CLPs.

The CLPs of developed economies are higher than developing economies in both PPPs (real) and exchange rate (nominal) measurements. The real CLPs are always higher than nominal CLP in high-income, upper-middle-income, lower-middle-income and low-income economies. Both real and nominal CLPs converge along with the economic growth.

The average figures used in the study may not always be the most representative statistics. The CLPs determined provide an initial approximation for comparison between different economies to gain further insights into the best practices and policies for the more successful economies. Future research is recommended to uncover the underlying factors of CLPs congruence.

The convergence of real and nominal CLPs when economies transit from a developing to developed status indicates that the construction product has transformed from a commonly understood non-internationally traded product to an internationally traded product.

The growing adoption of sustainable finance for inclusive agribusiness requires a cross-country comparison. In this paper, a comparative discourse of sustainable finance (SF) options for agribusiness transformation in Nigeria and Brunei is attempted; as well as examining the implications on entrepreneurship and enterprise development in both countries.

A mixed research method was adopted for this cross-country comparative analysis. To gain deeper insight into agribusiness and SF, the authors sourced the required data from scholarly articles, texts, World Bank data (2000–2016), national policy documents, working papers, national development plan reports, and other online resources on agribusiness and SF. The authors adopted mixed data (non-numeric and numeric data) because they allow for combining content analysis and secondary data in quantitative analysis (Williams and Shepherd, 2017). This mixed method approach follows a three-stage, namely: Data sourcing, Data development and conversion and Data analysis.

This discourse based on the mixed data produced four findings. Firstly, it was found that both countries have different statuses in the agribusiness sector, but Brunei had better growth performance in the crop, food, livestock, cereal production indices compared to Nigeria. Secondly, the challenges facing agribusiness in both countries include inadequate funding, misuse/mismanagement of land resources, deployment of extractive farming practices, application of ozone-depleting chemicals and pesticides among others have harmed the vegetation, the farmland, and the chemistry of the ocean resulting in low productivity. Thirdly, the SF options that are suitable for agribusiness transformation are green loans, green bonds, green credit, green investment funds, green mortgage scheme and other green financial support instruments given mostly as grants, subsidies and tax reliefs. The key guidelines for entrepreneurs seeking SF options for agribusiness are Principles 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10 of the EPs.

The main limitation of the study is that the analysis and interpretation of the findings are based on descriptive statistics. However, future research should consider using rigorous econometric tests such as the Co-Integration Test, Test of Causality and Inferential Statistics that would enhance stronger generalisation and prediction.

The practical implication is that agribusiness transformation through sustainable finance options (SFOs) would bring about a structural change from the current subsistence agricultural practices to large-scale agriculture practices characterised by the deployment of agricultural information systems (AGRIS), precision agriculture and agricultural technologies. Flowing from the first implication, the nexus between agribusiness and SFOs will systematically improve agricultural productivity in the areas of crop production, fishing, livestock and forestry in both countries. Thirdly, an improved agribusiness would boost food production and availability thereby mitigating the rising trends in food insecurity, food inflation, food poverty, and ultimately will help actualize SDG 1(No poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), and SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing).

The authors contribute to the literature on SF and agribusiness in emerging economies by identifying an inclusive strategy that matters for agribusiness transformation in high-income and low-income economies.

This study examines whether unemployment affects the relationship between income inequality and food security in 143 advanced and developing economies from 2000 to 2019. The authors specifically explore whether unemployment can weaken the negative impact of income inequality on food security.

The authors estimate a new and robust index of food security using a generalized least squares approach. The authors then employ the system generalized method of moments to estimate the model as it allows the authors to control for endogeneity and simultaneity. The authors estimate an interaction term to account for the moderating impact of unemployment.

The authors consistently find that income inequality has a negative and significant association with food security. However, the results differ between advance and developing economies. The authors find that unemployment rates have a negative relationship with food security in the sample of developing countries, where high levels of unemployment exacerbate the adverse effects of income inequality on food security. This is insignificant for advanced economies.

The major limitation lies in the use of aggregated data, which overlooks the issue of food security at the household or individual level.

Policymakers in developing economies can ensure job security in order to lessen the adverse effects of income inequality on food security.

This study provides new empirical evidence on whether unemployment can potentially moderate and alleviate the impact of income inequality in advanced and developing economies.

This paper examines the effects of foreign aid type on human well being. Cross‐country regressions revealed aid for education and water to be positively correlated with human well being in low‐income countries while aid for education and health are positively correlated with human well being in lower‐middle‐income countries. The results also confirm growth in output and gross domestic investment to be positively associated with human well being in low‐ and lower‐middle‐income countries. In the low‐income countries, it is also found that unproductive government expenditure, conflicts and rural populations are negatively correlated with human well being. Conflicts and rural populations are also negatively correlated with human well being in the middle‐income countries.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the effect of commodity price shock on the Ethiopian economy for the sample period of 1991 Q1–2016 Q1.

The effect of commodity price shock is analyzed using Jorda's (2005) local projection method. The shock is, however, identified by applying short-run contemporaneous restrictions in a vector autoregressive model based on Cholesky decomposition.

The results signify that output is positively affected by the shock to the commodity price. In addition, domestic consumer price responds positively and significantly to world commodity price shock after the first quarter. The commodity price shock has also a positive effect, on impact, on money supply. Foreign exchange reserve increases significantly from the fourth quarter onwards and real effective exchange rate appreciates on impact, though insignificantly, in response to the increase in commodity price.

This paper adds to the limited available literature on the effect of commodity price shock for developing countries in general and the Ethiopian economy in particular.