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The development of financial markets as well as a country’s overall financial system plays a crucial role in the evolution of the world’s real economy. In developed countries like the USA, UK, Japan, and European nations, the world’s financial centers are located for exchanging huge capital flows with well-established functioning. However, laying the foundation for a financial center can be a big challenge to developing markets whose financial systems are still in the early stages, since the formation of financial centers is determined by multiple factors. Motivated by that reason, this book chapter provides a comprehensive review of critical determinants in the formation of international financial centers, including (i) economic growth; (ii) governance and business environment; (iii) financial development; (iv) labor force; (v) infrastructure accessibility; and (vi) the country’s reputation and stability. In line with the reviewed literature, the study particularly highlights the recent political and technological developments in the world and their impacts on the future of different financial centers worldwide.

Digital transformation has made enormous changes in the banking domain, where FinTech is the salient driving force inside it. Especially in the banking industry, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain technology act as the most innovative technologies. Similarly, Chatbots in commercial banking and Robo-advisors in investment banking has shifted banks into the entire virtual environment. In this context, the main objectives of this chapter are: to determine the current application of AI and blockchain in the banking industry, to identify the challenges faced by banks in adapting AI and blockchain technology, and to provide new insights on future banking in the industry 5.0 in this digital era. This chapter discusses the application of two robotic platforms widely used in banking, chatbots, and Robo-advisors. Chatbots are more like frontline employees of banks who are commonly engaged in customer relationship management, sales, and marketing. In contrast, Robo-advisors are a relatively advanced AI tool involved in investment and portfolio management. Blockchain will accelerate digital transformation where a decentralized digital ledger system is used for banking transactions. However, this is entirely the opposite of conventional centralized digital banking, and the adoption of these technologies is still in its infancy. Employment, performance, security, privacy and trust, cost, ethical and regulatory challenges are the most common challenges. To avoid the challenges, banks should concern with strategies like collaboration with robots, increasing the platforms’ performance, etc. Finally, the chapter provides insights on banking at industry 5.0. In the future, banking customers can experience completely virtual and customer-oriented banking services. In this regard, the fusion of all technologies and collaborative human effort is essential.

The aim of this review is to reflect the current state of Financial Technology (FinTech) research along with its journey of development. Further, a conceptual framework showing the interaction of independent, mediating, and moderating variables with dependent variables (acceptance of FinTech products and services) along with propositions is prepared to facilitate the future researchers. This systematic literature review consists of 110 articles from 78 journals indexed in two academic databases (Scopus and/or Web of Science), extracting facts and figures about FinTech during 2016–2021. Our findings contribute to the literature by exemplifying that FinTech is a mixed set of threats and opportunities. In the present review only 18 articles belong to 2016–2017 but 54 articles are considered from 2020–2021, the increasing number of FinTech articles in high-ranking journals indicate the speedily growing popularity of FinTech. Similarly, secondary data based articles are dominating the primary data based ones. Further, regression analysis and PLS-SEM are the most popular statistical techniques among the authors of FinTech articles. To the best of knowledge of the authors, this is a unique study in which the latest FinTech research findings are skimmed.

This chapter empirically investigates the dynamic effects of globalisation on carbon emission in developing countries across the globe, experiencing a high-speed engine of globalisation over the last two decades. The allied existing literature discussed this issue mainly from the angles of economic expansions and integration of the global economy. However, some relevant factors like trade, financial, interpersonal and informational issues and cultural and politics should be highlighted in order to explore their possible influences on the high rate of carbon emission in the developing world under the modern epoch of globalisation. In this regard, this chapter utilises the World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI) (2020) and KOF Globalisation Index (2020) databases on selected 75 developing nations over the period of 2001–2018 to employ the dynamic panel econometric methods. The robust difference in generalised method of moments (GMM) estimates implies that trade is more harmful to high levels of carbon emissions in developing economies than all other components of globalisation.

Sustainable energy like renewable energy plays a critical role in achieving sustainable development goals including energy security in emerging economics. BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) constitutes about 23% of the world’s GDP, 40% of the world’s population and 36% share of the supply of primary energy in the world. Obviously the Bloc has tremendous potential in influencing the global sustainable clean energy transition with the advantages like lowering the costs of renewable, boosting employment in the sector of green energy, enhancement of energy security and improvement of local air quality. Despite the existence of varieties of renewable energy resources in the BRICS economies, renewable energy resources are found underdeveloped. The major objectives of this chapter are to assess progress of different forms of energy especially renewable energy, impact of development of renewable energy on carbon emission and policy issues in renewable energy development in the context of sustainable energy development of BRICS countries.

Recent evidences show that terrorism is becoming frequent in Nigeria, ranging from incessant Boko Haram activities in the North East; Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) activities in the South-East states, kidnapping and vandalizing oil pipes in the South-South, Fulani-herdsmen attacks in the Middle Belt, among others. In an attempt to tackle terrorism, the Federal Government at different times adopted military actions with little or no lasting solution. The Have and Have-nots hypothesis (Shahbaz, 2013) stresses the role of economic phenomenon in determining the causes of terrorism. It is on this note that this chapter investigates the linkages between economic growth proxy by gross domestic product per capita (GDPPC) and other fundamental variables such as inflation, unemployment, and inequality gaps, among others; and terrorism in Nigeria. We intend to know whether cointegration exists between the two constructs; and if it does, is there causality? The study employed both the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) and the vector error correction model (VECM) approaches to examine the existence of or otherwise a long-run relationship as well as causality among the constructs. Results reveal that a compelling cointegrating relationship exists among the variables. It is further revealed that unemployment, inequality, poverty, inflation, among others, Granger cause terrorism. It stresses that the Have-not hypothesis explained the causes of terrorism in Nigeria. The study therefore suggests that policy makers should, in order to prevent or combat terrorism, focus on improving the economy by creating job opportunities through provision of conducive environment that supports businesses and reduces inequality gaps.

This chapter investigates the social determinants (urbanisation, population, literacy and corruption) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the top 100 developed and developing emitting countries. The data were collected from central repositories for the different variables explored for the period 2012–2020 in a cross-country analysis. Fixed effects ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used to analyse the data. The results for all top 100 countries and developing countries show that urbanisation and corruption are significantly positive and negative determinants of GHG emissions, respectively. In addition, literacy is a significant positive determinant of GHG emissions in developing countries but not in the top 100 and developed countries. Population is not significant in the top 100 developed and developing countries. The results for the control variables suggest that primary energy consumption is a positive significant determinant of GHG emissions in the top 100 developed and developing countries. However, gross domestic product (GDP) is not a significant determinant of GHG emissions. The findings have important policy implications.

This study focuses on examining the impact of energy consumption, economic structure, population, and manufacturing output on the CO₂ emissions of selected emerging countries by utilizing the Structural Time Series Model (STSM). Based on the annual data ranging from 1970 to 2019, the model is built up using total primary energy consumption, GDP per capita, population and manufacturing value-added, and, finally, a stochastic Underlying Emission Trend as explanatory variables. STSM is extended by the introduction of the notion of Underlying Energy Demand Trend (UEDT) as a factor for exogenous effects, including development in technical progress, energy efficiency improvements, changes in human behaviors, economy, and environmental regulations. In this context, STSM and the notion of UEDT are implemented to form a forecasting model for CO₂ emissions of the selected emerging countries. The model discovers the significant influences of all selected variables of CO₂ emissions. The results suggest that the most forceful factor in CO₂ emissions is the total primary energy supply. Furthermore, while the long-term impact of economic growth on CO₂ emissions is negative for some emerging economies, it is positive for several others. The model also measures the long-term manufacturing value-added elasticity of CO₂ emissions in these emerging economies.

Existing models of gift applied to religious charities are either abstract or sometimes very limited in their applicability to understand the reciprocal relationships throughout the interconnected chain of giving and receiving charities. The paper contributes to this debate by asking: How gift economy explains the circulation of charities across interconnected spheres of local governance? And what are the implications of these inter-linkages for social welfare provisions where states are ineffective in the provision of these services? To answer these questions, the study presents the case of Zakat in Islam and Dasvandh in Sikhism in the northwest of Pakistan. In both the cases, charity is an important element of the social welfare provision within local governance structure. The findings suggest that conceptualizations of the religious charities as a triad including God, the rich and the poor are unsuitable gift models for grasping the role of charities in the local governance of social welfare provision.

The restrictive measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to everything across the world. The global crisis hit every sphere of life. The mobility restrictive nature of the pandemic was a major blow to the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. For a country like Pakistan, with an unstable economy and struggling tourism, the pandemic served as ground zero. This chapter critically examines tourism dimensions in Pakistan and how it sustained the impact of various crises. It pays attention to the concepts of vulnerability, social and community resilience, and adaptive capacity to provide a theoretical understanding of the revival of tourism in Pakistan. It also considers the impact of COVID-led measures on the tourism industry and corresponding initiatives of the government. The chapter concludes by arguing that Pakistan should carefully monitor and assess the current debates on tourism policies and practices. The chapter suggests that the national tourism strategy should incorporate a mechanism that can address tourism in crises in addition to addressing the environmental, socio-cultural and economic impact of tourism.