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The essence of finance has become essential in the sustainability discussion in recent times as a result of the capital intensive nature of sustainable projects. This has motivated financial experts and institutions to develop various financial instruments and mechanisms to further advance the course of protecting the environment, and decreasing the release of excess carbon and GreenHouse Gases. This is to also provide the opportunity for funding Green or sustainable infrastructure development. This chapter advances a discourse on matters relating to sustainable financing of infrastructure projects. The fundamentals of sustainable or green funding of infrastructure projects, and sustainable schemes of financing green infrastructure projects are discussed.

India launched Smart City Mission in 2015 with an objective of development of 100 smart cities with a completion deadline in 2019 that was extended till June 2023. Smart City Mission is an important mission in the backdrop that urban population in India is projected to be 67.55 crore in 2035 from 48.30 crore in 2020. Further, by 2035, the percentage of population in India at mid-year residing in ‘urban area’ will be 43.2% as per the United Nations – Habitat's World Cities Report 2022 and it will be just next to China's urban population in 2035 that is projected at 1.05 billion. A recent World Bank report (2022) estimated that India will need to invest US (United States) $840 billion over the next 15 years, i.e. US $55 billion per annum – into urban infrastructure if it has to effectively meet the needs of its fast-growing urban population.

This chapter focuses on financing of sustainable smart cities in India. This chapter summarises financing options explored by the government in the beginning, challenges faced in financing of Smart City Mission in India over a period due to various developments such as pandemic, delay in execution of projects under the Smart City Mission, among others. Finally, suggestions have been given for making financing means effective and sustainable. These suggestions are based on the gaps between the ‘financing means thought of’ in the beginning and ‘financing means actually applied’ while executing Smart City Mission in India. Financing part is worth exploring in the background that India had the fiscal deficit at 3.9% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2015–2016 and most recently, the country had the fiscal deficit at 6.71% of GDP in FY22. And the country also dealt with the pandemic like other economies and provided COVID-19 vaccine free of cost to all citizens. Insights are useful for any other economy with a similar sustainable and smart city mission while facing resource constraints.

This study aims to explore the housing demand of urban fringe residents in southwest Ankara. Two subquestions were developed: What are the respondents’ perceptions of Ankara city center and which characteristics do they prioritize for living in the urban fringe? Data were collected through a face-to-face household survey, and a hedonic regression model was developed based on responses.

Increasing housing demand, lifestyle change and faulty housing policies in Ankara have triggered urban sprawl along fringe areas, which causes several urban problems. Considering that urban sprawl is related to housing demand, it is essential to examine the structure of housing demand and the preference to live near the urban fringe.

According to the survey results, security, crime, noise pollution, traffic congestion and parking problems that reduce the welfare of Ankara city center encouraged expansion toward the rural–urban fringe, in addition to low-quality or traditional housing attributes. The urban core became unattractive to the respondents for being insecure, chaotic and down-market. The hedonic model showed that seven variables, all related to housing characteristics, best explain the housing demand in the area. Socioeconomic status and lifestyle were found to be associated with the desire to live on the urban fringe, also indicating the snob effect.

The authors propose taking domain-specific housing demand patterns in the spatial planning assumptions and housing policies into consideration for a well-governed urban development in Ankara. Making the city center more appealing through rehabilitation should be preferable rather than limiting demand on the urban fringe with a strict intervention in housing supply.

The purpose of this research is to identify and test selected economic and organisational factors influencing the sustainability of participatory budgeting (PB) in Slovakia.

The data were collected from websites and publicly available documents from all local governments with urban municipality status in Slovakia, for a total of 155 municipalities, 59 of which have established a participatory budget. The main method applied was correlation analysis.

The findings indicate: (1) a weak inverse correlation between debt level and the continuous existence of PB in municipalities; (2) a moderate direct correlation between the duration of PB in a municipality and integration of PB in its programme budgeting; (3) a moderate direct correlation between the duration of PB in a municipality and the political experience of the mayor.

The findings are derived from a quantitative analysis of cases localised in a single country, and therefore interpretation requires an awareness of the context of local democracy in Slovakia. In this regard, any generalisation beyond the context under study needs to be considered with caution.

This research fills a gap in the role of PB in the context of sustainability, especially in the context of a post-communist country like Slovakia. It applies a quantitative approach to the analysis of PB, which is relatively rare in this field of study (qualitative case studies are predominant in PB research).

How to realize social capital “exit from virtual to real” has become not only a hot issue that elicited economists' and the practice field's concern but also a key economic structure problem that the government has to solve urgently. The main purpose of this study is to explore effective methods for social capital to “exit from virtual to real”.

The study investigates the realization path of social capital's “exit from virtual to real” by using firm theory and data from the National Bureau of Statistics in China. Provincial panel data are also utilized to empirically test the impact of social capital's de-realization to virtual (or from virtual to real) on economic development and whether the path of social capital “from virtual to real” is valid.

This study analyzes the development status of social funds serving the real economy and the hazards of social funds' “exit from real to virtual,” which are mainly viewed as eroding the development of the real economy and causing operating difficulties. On the basis of firm theory, the internal motivation for why social funds flow to the real economy is explored from the perspectives of the needs of the real economy, price and profit. Moreover, this study designs a path for returning social capital to the real economy.

Overall, expanding aggregate demand while providing an effective supply and implementing a proactive fiscal policy that focuses on structural tax cuts while keeping margins in the virtual economy are appropriate for promoting the competitiveness of the real economy.

This study explores a topic, namely, social capital “exit from virtual to real,” that has received little attention. It provides an in-depth discussion of the following questions. (1) What is the current situation of social capital serving the real economy? (2) What kind of harm can social capital bring to society? What are the inherent barriers to the flow of social capital to the real economy? (3) At this stage, how can the effective transformation of social capital into the real economy be realized? The findings help in understanding the sustainable entrepreneurship concept, particularly in developing countries.

Basic income (BI) is predicted to be the major economic intervention in response to raising income inequality and accelerating technological progress. Financing is often the first question that arises when discussing a BI. A thorough answer to this question will determine the sustainability of any BI program. However, BI experiments implemented worldwide have not answered this question. This paper explores two options for a BI program in Australia: (1) BI and (2) top-up basic income (TBI).

The authors employ “back-of-the-envelope” calculations with the latest publicly available data on income distribution, the poverty line and the share of income tax in the government revenue to estimate the costs of implementing BI in Australia.

Even without any change in the current tax regulations, the TBI option, which requires a contribution of 2–3% disposable income from net contributors, will guarantee that no Australian family lives under the current national poverty line. The BI for all options is not financially feasible under the current tax and transfer regulations because it requires an additional tax rate of at least 42% of disposable income from net contributors.

The results of this study can serve as inputs for the design and implementation of BI options in Australia and similar countries.

This is the first paper that examines the macroeconomic effects of BI options in Australia.

This study aims to explore the potential impact of country-level governance in corporate financing structures.

A two-step system generalized method of moment was used due to the endogeneity issue. The whole sample comprises 3,761 firms in five economies – China, India, Pakistan, Singapore and South Korea – from 2007 to 2016.

The results indicate that the debt option for financing is not favorable under governments with an adequate governance arrangement. However, there is a direct and significant link between country governance and equity financing because in adequate governance arrangements, the possibilities of information asymmetry are minimal and businesses consider equity a more appropriate and safer financing instrument. In contrast, firms prefer to trade-credit financing in poor governance economies, which confirms an adverse link between trade credit and adequate governance.

The country’s governance should be considered a sensitive matter when deciding about corporate financing.

This arrangement of variables has not been previously analyzed in the literature, suggesting the study’s novelty.

This study aims to assess the efficiency of managing working capital in 1,388 Indian manufacturing firms from 2008 to 2019 and investigate the effects of firm-specific and macro-level determinants on working capital management (WCM) efficiency.

The current study accommodates a slack-based measure (SBM) in data envelopment analysis (DEA) for computing WCM efficiency. Further, we implement a panel data fixed-effects model that controls for heterogeneity across firms in determining the relationships of selected variables with WCM efficiency.

The results highlight that manufacturing firms operate at around 50 percent efficiency, which is constant throughout the study period. Furthermore, among the selected variables, yield, earnings, age, size, ability to create internal resources, interest rate and gross domestic product (GDP) significantly affect WCM efficiency.

Instead of the traditional models used for assessing efficiency, the SBM-DEA model is unit-invariant and monotone for slacks, implying that it can handle zero and negative data, which overcomes the incapability of prior DEA models. Hence, this provides accurate efficiency scores for robust analysis. Additionally, this paper provides a holistic working capital model recognizing firm-specific and macro-level determinants for a more explicit estimation of the relationship between WCM efficiency and the selected determinants.

Many countries around the world are facing great challenges from their ageing population with shrinking workforce, this will put more pressure on their financial system and will increase the public spending on care costs provided to older people. Egypt is in the phase of establishing a new law for older people care's rights, a law that will organise how older people in need for care would benefit from access to government financial support and how will families support their older relatives financially and how the care costs will be shared between the older people, their families and the government.

The paper examines the suitability two cost-sharing methods and applying them to assess the effect on the individuals and families' income strain.

The preferred approach can be used for sharing costs as it applies a gradual funding withdrawal by the government and provide more fairness and flexibility for application in different regions. Besides, the parameters of this approach can be used by policy makers to control the levels of funding.

The paper will be the first to discuss the intergenerational fairness from a financial perspective in Egypt to avoid forcing older people into poverty or resorting to poverty trade-off.