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The study investigates the effects of energy resource efficiency on the triple themes of sustainable development (economic, social and environmental dimensions). We adopt a quantitative research method, and the required macroeconomic data were extracted from World Development Indicators for a period of 30 years (1991–2020). The extracted data were analysed using correlation analysis and linear regression. Ultimately, the estimations from the three models produced mixed results. Energy resource efficiency (EFF) exerts a significant positive effect on economic sustainability (ECS), a significant negative effect on social sustainability (SOS) and a significant negative effect on environmental sustainability (EVS). However, claims on government (COG) exerted an insignificant negative effect on ECS, an insignificant negative effect on SOS and a significant positive effect on environmental sustainability (EVS). In practical terms, the findings are consistent with previous empirical studies, and they also validate X-efficiency theory (XET) and resource curse theory (RCT). The study concludes with implications, limitations and further research directions.

This chapter examines the role of the central bank digital currency (CBDC) in achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs). Digitalisation is transforming the sustainable development landscape, and there is a need for central banks to play a major role in digital transformation for sustainable development. This topic is important to policymakers interested in how central bank innovation can help support SDGs’ realisation. This study is also relevant to researchers researching how a CBDC can be used to achieve SDGs. The author argued that a CBDC could unlock financing for each SDG, provide convenient access to capital and increase payment efficiency. CBDC can also increase the speed of transaction chains and provide greater capital efficiency for investment in sustainable development activities and projects. A CBDC can support realising the United Nations’ SDGs. Policymakers should ensure that the CBDC in their respective countries is designed to incorporate features that consider sustainable development concerns for attaining the United Nations’ SDGs. There has yet to be an attempt to assess how a CBDC can contribute to realising the United Nations’ SDGs. The literature needs to examine the opportunities CBDC presents for achieving SDGs.

This study investigates the efficiency of value relevance and faithful representation when stock market price derivates from its firm value to the investigated IT companies listed in FTSE Taiwan 50. The empirical investigation reveals one financial indicators: Return on equity (ROE) has explanatory ability among seven financial indicators, earnings per share (EPS), book value (BV), dividend yield (Div.), price–earnings ratio (P/E), ROE, return on assets (ROA), and return on operating asset (ROOA) to both sampled companies, United Microelectronics Corporation, UMC, (2303) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, TSMC, (2330). Furthermore, the empirical results indicate that the higher order moments, skewness and kurtosis, of price deviation do not provide a reliable prediction or explanatory power for stock price trends.

In this chapter, we consider the possibility that a firm may use costly resources to improve its technical efficiency. Results from static analyses imply that technical efficiency is determined by the configuration of factor prices. A dynamic model of the firm is developed under the assumption that managerial skill contributes to technical efficiency. Dynamic analysis shows that the firm can never be technically efficient if it maximizes profits, the steady state is always inefficient, and it is locally stable. In terms of empirical analysis, we show how likelihood-based methods can be used to uncover, in a semi-non-parametric manner, important features of the inefficiency-management relationship using a flexible functional form accounting for the endogeneity of inputs in a production function. Managerial compensation can also be identified and estimated using the new techniques. The new empirical methodology is applied in a data set previously analyzed by Bloom and van Reenen (2007) on managerial practices of manufacturing firms in the UK, US, France and Germany.

This chapter analyzes the process of surplus generation in Latin America based on the Penn World Tables, also with a comparison with the United States. The reference period is 1950–2019, revealing long-run evolution as well as certain differences between a State-driven industrialization strategy, the turn toward neoliberalism beginning in the 1980s, and a neo-developmentalist period in the twenty-first century. The research shows a steep decline in the rate of profit in Latin America until the early 1990s, with stabilization thereafter but without reversal of the downward trend. However, the turning point in terms of capital accumulation, surplus generation, and productivity indicators occurred in the early 1980s. In addition, divergence vis-à-vis the United States has been growing in the capacity to generate surplus, labor productivity, and GDP per capita.

Integration between the different components of development is a major aspiration of the 2030 agenda, but the efforts of firms that intend to contribute simultaneously to multiple development trajectories may be hindered by trade-offs that occur between the different sustainable development goals (SDGs) and targets. At the same time, synergies may also materialize and reinforce firm’s contribution. This chapter analyzes the effects of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and other foreign investors on two different targets of SDG 7, namely access of population to modern energy systems, chiefly electricity, and the use of carbon-free and renewable energy sources in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, and the authors investigate whether foreign investors experience trade-offs and synergies in their contributions. A two-equation growth model of households’ access to electricity and carbon factor is estimated by employing a panel dataset that covers 15 SSA countries and foreign direct investment (FDI) from 82 origin countries over the 2005–2011 period. The findings reveal that foreign investors are subject to a trade-off in their effects, because when they foster access to electricity they are also likely to spur carbon factor increases, and vice versa, depending on the economic development of host and home countries. Nevertheless, electrification and carbon factor reduction are shown to be linked by a system-level synergy. The results have implications for the design of MNEs attraction measures and energy policy in recipient countries.