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This study clarifies the intricate nature of globalization's impact on unemployment rates in South Africa. Given the heterogeneous views on globalization's effect on economic development, this study aims to offer a nuanced perspective. Furthermore, it aims to explore the mediating role of entrepreneurial development in shaping the complex relationship between globalization and unemployment.

The study employs four key indicators to measure entrepreneurial development, globalization and unemployment rates in South Africa. Hierarchical regression is used to evaluate the relationship between globalization and unemployment rates, and how entrepreneurial development mediates this relationship. Additionally, both the Sobel test and bootstrapping analyses were employed to verify and validate the mediating relationship.

The study demonstrates that globalization constitutes a crucial determinant of (un)employment rates in South Africa. The study shows that entrepreneurial development, specifically in the context of established business ownership, but not total early-stage entrepreneurial activity, exhibits an inverse relationship with unemployment rates. Moreover, it was observed that the positive impact of globalization on entrepreneurial development in South Africa becomes evident as SMEs advance to the established stage.

The study's concentration on South Africa constrains the applicability of the results to other nations.

Based on the findings of this study, it is essential for emerging economies, such as South Africa, to take measures to foster a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem that can aid in the growth and international competitiveness of young SMEs.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study represents the first endeavor to analyze the potential impact of entrepreneurial development, as measured by both nascent and mature SMEs, on the correlation between globalization and unemployment.

This study explores the relationship between economic freedom and gender ideologies on the allocation of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship across countries. Opportunity entrepreneurship is typically understood as one’s best option for work, whereas necessity entrepreneurship describes the choice as driven by no better option for work. Specifically, we examine how economic freedom (i.e. each country’s policies that facilitate voluntary exchange) and gender ideologies (i.e. each country’s propensity for gendered separate spheres) affect the distribution of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship across countries.

We construct our sample by matching data from the following country-level sources: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s Adult Population Survey (APS), the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index (EFI), the European/World Value Survey’s Integrated Values Survey (IVS) gender equality index, and other covariates from the IVS, Varieties of Democracy (V-dem) World Bank (WB) databases. Our final sample consists of 729 observations from 109 countries between 2006 and 2018. Entrepreneurial activity motivations are measured by the ratio of the percentage of women’s opportunity-driven total nascent and early-stage entrepreneurship to the percentage of female necessity-driven total nascent and early-stage entrepreneurship at the country level. Due to a first-order autoregressive process and heteroskedastic cross-sectional dependence in our panel, we estimate a fixed-effect regression with robust standard errors clustered by country.

After controlling for multiple macro-level factors, we find two interesting findings. First, economic freedom positively affects the ratio of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship. We find that the size of government, sound money, and business and credit regulations play the most important role in shaping the distribution of contextual motivations over time and between countries. However, this effect appears to benefit efficiency and innovation economies more than factor economies in our sub-sample analysis. Second, gender ideologies of political equality positively affect the ratio of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship, and this effect is most pronounced for efficiency economies.

This study offers one critical contribution to the entrepreneurship literature by demonstrating how economic freedom and gender ideologies shape the distribution of contextual motivation for women’s entrepreneurship cross-culturally. We answer calls to better understand the variation within women’s entrepreneurship instead of comparing women’s and men’s entrepreneurial activity. As a result, our study sheds light on how structural aspects of societies shape the allocation of women’s entrepreneurial motivations through their institutional arrangements.

Within the current institutional landscape, characterized by increased societal and governmental emphasis on environmental preservation, there is growing interest in the potential of digital transformation (DT) to advance the circular economy (CE). Nonetheless, the empirical substantiation of the connection between DT and CE remains limited. This study seeks to investigate the impact of DT on CE at the organizational level and examine how various institutional factors may shape this relationship within the Chinese context.

To scrutinize this association, we construct a research framework and formulate hypotheses drawing on institutional theory, obtaining panel data from 238 Chinese-listed high-tech manufacturing firms from 2006 to 2019. A regression analysis approach is adopted for the sample data.

Our regression analysis reveals a positive influence of DT on CE performance at the organizational level. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the strength of this relationship is bolstered in the presence of heightened regional institutional development and industry competition. Notably, we find no discernible effect of a firm’s political connections on the DT–CE performance nexus.

This study furnishes empirical evidence on the relationship between DT and CE performance. By elucidating the determinants of this relationship within the distinct context of Chinese institutions, our research offers theoretical and practical insights, thus laying the groundwork for subsequent investigations into this burgeoning area of inquiry.

The study's objective is to examine the relevance of globalization in affecting the size of the shadow economy in selected African nations.

To do this, the authors employ the KOF globalization index and implement both static and dynamic common correlated mean group estimators on a panel of 24 African nations from 1995–2017. This technique accommodates the issue of cross-sectional dependence, sample bias and endogenous regressors. Panel threshold analysis is also conducted to establish the nonlinearity between globalization and the shadow economy. To examine the causality between the variables, the study employs Dumitrescu and Hurlin's panel causality test.

The results show that globalization reduces the size of the shadow economy. The results of the nonlinear analysis suggest a U-shaped relationship. Overall globalization has a threshold impact of 48.837%, economic globalization has 45.615% and political globalization has 66.661% while social globalization has a threshold value of 35.744%. The results of the panel causality show that there is a bidirectional causality between the two variables.

The results suggest that the government and other relevant authorities need to introduce capital controls and other policy measures to moderate the degree of social, political and cultural diffusion. Appropriate policies should be formulated to monitor the extent of African economic openness to other continents to maximize the gains from globalization.

Apart from being the first study in the African region that evaluates the relevance of globalization in controlling the shadow economy, it also analyzes the dynamics and threshold analysis between the two variables using advanced panel econometrics which makes the study unique. The study suggests that globalization tools are useful for affecting the size of the shadow economy in Africa. This study provides fresh empirical evidence on the impact of globalization on the shadow economy in the case of Africa.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of political relations on trade in strategic emerging industries (SEIs) in the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) associated countries. This investigation encompasses not only from the perspective of bilateral political relations but also the political intervention of third parties.

The study employs the temporal exponential random graphmodel to analyze the dynamic structure and influencing factor of SEIs trade network among 150 BRI-associated countries from 2015 to 2020.

The results indicate that the trade of SEIs in the BRI-associated countries exhibits a pattern of concentrated exporters and decentralized importers. Amicable bilateral political relations foster trade cooperations in SEIs, while political pressure from the United States has the opposite effect. Furthermore, compared with the influence of third parties, the BRI has created a more robust trade environment characterized by political mutual trust.

BRI-associated countries should strengthen their political communication, and endeavor to transform political consensus and shared vision into concrete collaborative projects, while mitigating geopolitical uncertainties through a sound risk evaluation system. Moreover, they should establish a more transparent and consistent consultation mechanism and leverage the BRI trade network to foster balanced and mutually beneficial partnerships that minimize rivalry and dependence on a single market.

This study goes beyond observed trade cost and incorporates the political factor into the determinants of the BRI trade, thereby expanding the theoretical boundaries of existing BRI research. Also, this study employs bilateral trade data to construct SEIs trade networks (SEITNs) along the BRI route. It provides a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic determinates of the SEITNs will provide valuable practical guidance for enhancing and expanding trade and cooperation among BRI-associated countries.

While extant literature explores the influence of institutions on the national innovation system (NIS), most research has either focused on specific institutional aspects or treated institutions as a unified entity. This study aims to examine the effect of various institutional factors on a country’s NIS.

The conceptual model was empirically validated using regression analysis. The study sample comprised a total of 84 countries.

This study identifies and empirically validates a comprehensive set of institutional factors. It also highlights the significant institutional factors (including political stability, government effectiveness, ease of resolving insolvency and the rule of law) that can help improve a country’s NIS.

The research provides practical implications for organizations and policymakers seeking to understand and foster an innovative culture within the NIS. Policymakers are encouraged to develop a nurturing environment within the NIS by focusing on significant institutional factors. Organizations are encouraged to closely monitor developments in the NIS of a country to make informed strategic decisions at the business, corporate and international levels.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the productive structure and the size of the informal economy in Latin American countries.

The study employs econometric techniques for panel data covering the period from 2002 to 2017 and considering 17 Latin American countries. The evidence presented is based on the informal economy data generated by Medina and Schneider (2018) who estimate the size of the informal economy using a structural equation model and the share of manufacturing in total employment as a measure of the size of the manufacturing sector. Also, the study addresses the possible endogeneity bias in the relationship studied and makes the conclusions more robust, thus avoiding spurious correlations that weaken the findings.

The results indicate that most industrialized Latin American countries are associated with a smaller size of the informal economy.

The findings have important policy implications, as they suggest that Latin American economies need to switch the structure of the economy toward more sophisticated productive structures if they want to reduce the size of the informal economy. Thus, more efforts should be deployed to policies to diversify and upgrade economies.

The study contributes to the literature on the informal economy by connecting the country’s productive structure and informality. Specifically, the results show that the productive structure of countries is a plausible explanation for the size of the informal economy.

This paper makes a novel attempt to estimate the potential impact of credit risk on foreign direct investment (FDI hereafter), thereby focusing on a completely unexplored area in the existing empirical literature.

To provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between credit risk and FDI inflows, the study incorporates all the eight-member economies of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC hereafter) and analyzes a panel data set, over the period 2011 to 2019, extracted from the World Development Indicators, using the suitable econometric techniques for the efficient estimations of the specified models.

The results indicate a negative and statistically significant relationship between the credit risk of the banking sectors and FDI inflows. Similarly, market size and inflation rate appear to be the two other main factors behind the increasing FDI inflows in the SAARC member economies. Interestingly, the size of the market became irrelevant in attracting FDI inflows when the Indian economy is excluded from the sample due to its higher economic weight. On the other hand, FDI inflows are not dependent on the level of trade openness, with most of the specifications showing either an insignificant or negative coefficient of the variable.

The obtained results are unique and robust to alternative methodologies, and hence, the SAARC economies could consider them as the critical inputs in formulating the appropriate policies on FDI inflows.

The findings are unique and original. The authors have established a relationship between credit risk and FDI for the first time in the SAARC context.

In this work, the authors analyze the dynamic interdependencies between military expenditures and the real economy for the period 1970–2018, and the authors' approach allows for the existence of dominant economies in the system.

In this study, the authors employ a Network General Equilibrium GVAR (global vector autoregressive) model.

By accounting for the interconnection among the top twelve military spenders, the authors' findings show that China acts as a leader in the global military scene based on the respective centrality measures. Meanwhile, statistically significant deviations from equilibrium are observed in most of the economies' military expenses, when subjected to an unanticipated unit shock of other countries. Nonetheless, in the medium run, the shocks tend to die out and economies converge to an equilibrium position.

With the authors' methodology the authors are able to capture not only the effect of nearness on a country's military spending, as the past literature has documented, but also a country's defense and economic dependencies with other countries and how a unit's military expenses could shape the spending of the rest. Using state-to-the-art quantitative and econometric techniques, the authors provide robust and comprehensive analysis.

Our study aims to evaluate the impact of infrastructure and public investment on private investment in machinery and equipment in Brazil from 1947 to 2017. The contribution of our article to the existing literature lies in providing a more comprehensive understanding of the presence or absence of the crowding effect in the Brazilian economy by leveraging an extensive historical database. Our central argument posits that the recent decline in private capital accumulation over the last few decades can be attributed to shifts in economic policies – moving from a developmentalist orientation to nondevelopmental guidance since the early 1990s, which is reflected in the diminished levels of public investment and infrastructure since the 1980s.

We conducted a series of econometric regressions utilizing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model as our chosen econometric methodology.

Employing two different variables to measure public investment and infrastructure, our results – robust across various specifications – have substantiated the existence of a crowding-in effect in Brazil over the examined period. Thus, we have empirical evidence indicating that the state has influenced private capital accumulation in the Brazilian economy over the past decades.

Our article contributes to the existing literature by offering a more comprehensive understanding of the crowding effect in the Brazilian economy, utilizing an extensive historical database.