Search results

This paper analyzes the direct effect of financial development and the mediating impact of financial development through foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign aid and trade on economic growth for all Asian countries.

A fixed-effect model with Driscoll–Kraay panel corrected estimators was employed to find the direct and mediating impact of financial developments on growth for all 47 Asian economies from 1980 to 2020. The bootstrapped panel-quantile regression (BPQR) model is used to check how this effect varies for different income groups of countries.

The results demonstrated that financial development positively impacts countries' economic growth. The interaction effect of financial development with FDI, foreign aid and foreign trade negatively impacts economic growth. The BPQR results showed that FDI and foreign aid help in the growth of lower quantile economies; however, the impact is negative for middle- and upper-income countries. Trade impacts growth positively for all the quantiles of economies.

The results suggest that the Asian economies must continue to provide thrust on the financial development of their own countries to achieve better growth. It also implied that the dependence on external finance is good for low-income countries and not advisable for middle- and upper-income countries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first to provide empirical evidence on analyzing both the direct and interaction effect of financial development on economic growth by considering all the Asian economies.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2022-0587

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of financial development on the economic growth of jurisdictions with systemically important Islamic finance.

The authors use several estimation methods. The primary analysis is based on the LSDVC method using a sample of 23 countries covering the period of 2000–2019.

The findings suggest that the financial sector may not be a significant factor in determining economic growth, or that it may decrease it depending on the proxy used. These results are in line with recent studies and robust across different estimation specifications and methods used.

Finance practitioners may reconsider the way they conduct their daily activities as their impact on economic growth is fading away. Similarly, policymakers should consider the role that financial development plays in economic growth alongside other factors that may influence its impact. It may be necessary to examine the moderating effects of institutional development on the relationship between finance and growth and consider the channels through which financial development can contribute to economic growth. Additionally, it would be useful to study the impact of Islamic finance on economic growth using different data sources.

Although the topic has been explored using different data sets and focusing on different samples, it has not been explored considering the impact of Islamic finance development on economic growth. Given the global appeal of the Islamic finance industry, it is worth investigating its significance for economic growth.

This study aims to investigate the implications of natural gas rents and institutions as co-drivers of economic growth, focusing on the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) with panel data between 2001 and 2021.

This research paper uses a specialised two stage estimator, the panel instrumental variable technique (panel IV), which takes care of the potential endogeneity issues in the model.

The findings show that natural gas rent significantly impacts the economic growth of the GECF. On average, natural gas rent increases the sample’s growth rate by about 2.634% percentage points in the short run. The result indicates that the qualities of institutions (political and economic) have a significant positive long-term effect on the economies of the GECF. In addition, the study’s energy price volatility positively correlates with the countries’ growth.

There might be a need to investigate the effects of natural gas rents and institutions as co-growth drivers in each country within the GECF. The likelihood exists that the impact of natural gas rents and institutions on economic growth at the country’s level may differ from the outcome of such an experiment on the group level. Because of space and time limitations, this study could not carry out the specific country’s investigation of natural gas rents and institutions as a co-growth driver. That limitation may constitute further study to advance this study to a new height.

With good institutions, natural gas rent is likely to be an alternative growth driver for some economies that rely on fossil fuels like oil as a growth driver. By extension, the GECF has the potential to rival Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the global energy market, particularly in achieving Sustainable Development Goal number seven. In essence, evidence in this study suggests that natural gas rent has long-term positive effects on the growth of the GECF, conditioned on good institutions. Moreover, the drive of global energy consumption towards sustainable energy usage is an economic blessing for the GECF. By extension, the demand for natural gas would continue to rise, creating opportunities to improve natural gas rents. By implication, the GECF would continue to benefit from the pursuit of sustainability as the world shifts towards energy consumption with less CO₂.

Firstly, this study models the qualities of institutions for the GECF. Secondly, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first attempt to examine natural gas rents and the qualities of institutions as co-determinants of economic growth among the GECF (a potential cartel).

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.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of Islamic banks (IBs) and macroeconomic variables on economic growth in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Malaysia, Qatar, Bahrain and Bangladesh.

Based on these criteria, 672 observations from 24 IBs in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Malaysia, Qatar, Bahrain and Bangladesh were chosen for further investigation. Time series analysis is a well-known method for determining if model variables are stationary and how long-term relationships function through cointegration analysis. This study uses impulse response function (IRF) and variance decomposition (VD) methodologies to demonstrate how each macroeconomic variable shock influences the short-term dynamic path of all system variables.

Islamic banking promotes economic growth, especially in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Malaysia, Qatar, Bahrain and Bangladesh. The findings of the Islamic banking VDC test have a direct and long-term effect on economic growth.

The literature on this topic can be improved in a number of ways, including by adopting a more robust method to analyze over a longer time frame. By researching specific financing in various areas of the economy, one can gain a deeper understanding of Islamic financing. This will enable the identification of sectors that contribute to economic expansion. Future research should examine combining nations with pure Islam and dual-banking systems to acquire sufficient data.

This paper has practice and research implications. It recommends adopting the nation’s successful experiment with the Islamic banking system as a model for attaining economic growth through Islamic financing. To replicate this successful experiment, government-based decision-makers and monetary policy experts must collaborate to make Islamic money flows simple and rapid through financial channels that enhance economic growth.

The study of the contribution of Islamic banking to economic growth in developing nations, particularly those with the highest total assets (TAs) and total deposits (TDs) in the world, remains of modest value. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to empirically assess the impact of IBs in developing nations, particularly those with the highest TAs and TDs in the world, on economic growth as measured by gross domestic product (GDP).

Tourism–economy relationship in India has been studied extensively in the past literature using a single equation approach. However, the present paper diverted from this trend and examined the tourism–economy relationship using the specific to general modelling approach over the 1990–2018 time period. The study also accounts for the influence of merchandise trade, capital formation, foreign investment inflows and inflation on economic growth to achieve the robustness of the coefficient estimates.

To achieve the objective, the study utilised a specific to general modelling strategy. First, the regression equation includes only three core variables: gross domestic product (GDP), international tourist receipts and international tourist expenditures. Next, the authors include other control variables in the regression equation one by one, leading us to test five model types for investigating the cointegration among the variables. As for the estimation technique, the authors employed autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach.

The paper's findings highlight that tourism receipts and expenditures exert a positively significant impact on economic growth. Moreover, including the additional independent variables does not substantially change the tourism and economic growth relationship. The existence of one-way causality from tourism expenditures to economic growth supports the tourism-led growth hypothesis. These findings highlight the rationale for intervention by the government and policymakers to promote tourism potential and facilities to accelerate the overall growth performance of the country. While the existence of one-way causal effect from economic growth to tourism revenues supports the growth-led tourism development hypothesis, implying that economic expansion is necessary for tourism development.

This research article tried to present a comprehensive picture of India's tourism–economy relationship. However, the present study is organised as an aggregate economy-level analysis. It assumed that the aggregate tourism sector is homogenous. However, different tourism sectors exert different levels of influence on the economy. The authors expect future research can take the disaggregated analysis of the tourism–economy relationship.

This study provides valuable insights into the tourism-led growth hypothesis in India. The study highlights comprehensive intervention by the government and policymakers for accelerating tourism development to invigorate the overall growth performance of the country over the long run. The principal recommendation emerging from the present research is that the tourism growth potential can be depended upon to stimulate the economic performance of the Indian economy.

The present study diverted from the previous empirical studies by following a specific to general modelling strategy. First, the regression model includes only three core variables such as economic growth, tourism receipts and tourism expenditure. Next, the authors include other control variables in the regression equation one by one, leading us to test five model types for investigating the cointegrating relationship among the variables. GDP growth rate is used as a dependent variable in all five specifications. The idea is to expand the model to capture every feature of the data generating process.

This study examines the role of institutions and governance on the digital financial inclusion and economic growth nexus in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from 2014 to 2020.

This study adopts the generalised method of moments technique which controls for endogeneity. The authors employed four main variables namely, index of digital financial inclusion, gross domestic product per capita growth, institutions and governance.

The results suggest a significant positive effect of institutional quality and governance on the digital financial inclusion-economic growth nexus in SSA. Furthermore, the authors find that effect of trade and population growth on economic growth was significantly positive while inflation reduces economic growth in the region.

This study also ignored the effect of digital financial inclusion on environmental quality. Future researches should focus on addressing these drawbacks and replicating the study in Africa as a whole and other developing countries across the world that are experiencing digital financial inclusion and economic growth challenges. The results from the study imply that a positive relationship between digital financial inclusion and economic growth. It is important to note that the study was carried out on the premise that institutions play a pivotal role in enhancing economic growth in SSA.

The results confirm the significance of policies that enhances institutional quality and governance which are other avenues the authorities can pursue to enhance economic growth in SSA.

The paper documents the importance of institutions in boosting economic growth which impacts on social life rather than digital financial inclusion only.

The paper makes a contribution through analysing the role of institutions and governance on the digital financial inclusion-economic growth nexus rather than the traditional financial inclusion–economic growth nexus which is common to the majority of the available empirical studies.

The direction of the causality relationship between Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and economic growth is a highly controversial issue in the literature. There are two basic approaches advocating different causal directions between FDI and growth, which are called hypotheses of FDI-led Growth and Growth-led FDI. The aim of this study is to analyze the causality relationship between FDI and economic growth in RCEP countries and thus make a new contribution to the discussions in the relevant literature. In addition, the results of the study are expected to provide important implications for the policies to be designed for economic growth based on FDI flows to RCEP countries. Thus, by examining the direction of causality between FDI and economic growth in RCEP countries, we aim to provide a new contribution to related literature and make some implications for the policy design process of economic growth in the RCEP area.

We empirically examined the direction of a causal link between FDI and economic growth in the context of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RPEC) countries in order to test the hypothesis of FDI-led growth and Growth-led FDI. Accordingly, as our main variables of interest, we incorporated the inward foreign direct investment stock to gross domestic product ratio (FDI) and gross domestic product per capita (GDP). Hatemi-J (2012) asymmetric causality test has been employed in the investigation of the direction of causality between FDI and GDP over the period of 1980–2020. Thus, unlike most of the studies investigating the direction of causality between FDI and growth using the linear causality analysis method, our study performed a nonlinear causality analysis.

Empirical results reveal that the causal relationship between FDI and national income in RPEC countries is non-linear or asymmetric . The results of the symmetric causality test for both from FDI to national income and from national income to FDI are statistically insignificant for all countries. Therefore, this finding obtained from the study provided an important guide to the econometric methods to be used in other studies to be conducted in the same region in the future. Concerning the asymmetric causality relationship from FDI to growth, positive FDI shocks are an important cause of national income in most RCEP countries. However, the effect of negative FDI shocks on national income is quite weak compared to positive shocks. Regarding the asymmetric causality relationship from growth to FDI, positive national income shocks do not create a significant causal relationship with FDI. Similarly, the effects of negative national income shocks on FDI are statistically insignificant. Overall, asymmetric causality test results reveal that positive FDI shocks have an important causal impact on economic growth in most RCEP countries. Thus, the results of econometric analysis mostly support the argument that the FDI-led growth hypothesis rather than the Growth-led FDI hypothesis in RCEP countries. Accordingly, policy-makers in most of the RCEP countries should continue to provide more incentives and facilities to multinational companies in order to ensure constant economic growth.

Our study brings a significant difference in the econometric method used compared to most of the other studies in the literature. Existing empirical studies on the direction of causality between FDI and growth mostly use standard Granger-linear causality-type tests to detect the direction of causality among FDI and growth. Unlike most of the studies in the literature, our study adopted a different methodological approach, namely the Hatemi J test to detect the non-linear causality between FDI and economic growth in RCEP countries. Therefore, this paper made a new methodological contribution significantly to the literature focusing on the causal relationship between FDI and economic growth by using a non-linear causality method rather than a linear causality one.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of economic growth, digitalisation, eco-innovation, energy consumption and patents on environmental technologies on the volume of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) recorded in European countries for a period of nine years (2010–2018).

Two empirical methods were integrated into the theoretical approach developed based on the analysis of the current scientific framework. Multiple linear regression, an extended version of the OLS model, and a non-causal analysis as a robustness method, Dumitrescu–Hurlin, were used to achieve the proposed research objective.

Digitalisation described by the number of individual Internet users and patents on environmental technologies determines the amount of GHG in Europe, and economic growth continues to have a significant effect on the amount of emissions, as well as the consumption of renewable energy. European countries are not framed in well-established patterns, but the economic growth, digitalisation, eco-innovation and renewable energy have an impact on the amount of GHG in one way or another. In many European countries, the amount of GHGs is decreasing as a result of economic growth, changes in the energy field and digitalisation. The positive influence of economic growth on climate neutrality depends on its degree of sustainability, while patents have the same conditional effect of their translation into environmentally efficient technologies.

This study has a number of limitations which derive, first of all, from the lack of digitalisation indicators. The missing data restricted the inclusion in the analysis of variables relevant to the description of the European digitalisation process, also obtaining conclusive results on the effects of digitalisation on GHG emissions.

A similar analysis of the relationship among the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth, digitalisation, eco-innovation and renewable energy is less common in the literature. Also, the results can be inspirational in the sphere of macroeconomic policy.

With the recognition that generating economic growth is not the same as sustaining it, the challenge to catch-up and growth literature is discerning between these processes. Recent research suggests that the decline in the frequency of “shrinking” episodes is more important for long-term development than higher growth rates. By using a framework centred around social capabilities, this study aims to investigate the effects of income inequality and poverty on economic shrinking frequency, as opposed to previous literature that has exclusively had a growth focus. The aim is to investigate how and why some societies might be more resilient to economic shrinking.

The research is a quantitative study, and the authors build a longitudinal data set including 23 developing countries throughout 42 years to test the paper’s purpose. This study uses country and period fixed-effects specifications as well as cross-sectional graphical representations to investigate the relationship between proxies of economic inclusivity and the frequency of shrinking episodes.

The authors demonstrate that while inclusive societies are more resilient to shrinking overall, it is changes in poverty levels, but not changes in income inequality, that appear to be correlated with economic shrinking frequency. Inequality, while still an important element to explain countries’ growth potential as an initial condition, does not seem to make the sample more resilient to shrinking. The authors conclude that the mechanisms in which poverty and inequality are correlated with the catch-up process must run through different channels. Ultimately, processes that explain growth may intersect but not always overlap with the ones that explain resilience to shrinking.

The need for inclusive growth in long-term development has been championed for decades, yet inclusion has seldom been explored from the shrinking perspective. Though poverty reduction is already an important mainstream political objective, this paper differentiates itself by providing an alternate viewpoint of why this is important. Income inequality could have more of an economic growth limiting effect, while poverty reduction could be required to build resilience to economic shrinking. Developing countries will need both growth and resilience to shrinking, to catch-up with higher-income economies, which policymakers might need to balance carefully.