The economic impact of environmentally friendly innovations, and their knowledge externalities on productivity received an increasing attention from the research community. Although there are ...numerous studies focusing on this issue, to our knowledge, there is no systematic literature review so far able to provide a complete outlook on the state-of-the-art, and the directional change in the theoretical and empirical studies exploring the relationship between environmental spillover effects and firm productivity. In order to bridge this gap, the paper aims to identify empirical evidence concerning the public policy strategies introduced to support diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies. The findings of the undertaken systematic literature review reveal that innovative activity in environmental issues produces important knowledge spillovers. In the light of the findings, the study advocates that: (a) Public subsidies alone are not sufficient enough to deliver desired outcomes; (b) Implementation of a coherent policy mix is critical to achieve sustainable economic growth; (c) The policy mix should particularly contain a supportive cooperation strategy.
•Discusses the role of knowledge Spillovers in green technologies.•Explores intra-industry Spillovers and inter-industry Spillovers.•Evidences the Environmental innovation benefits from public interventions.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The high pace of economic growth has posed many challenges. These challenges include depletion of natural resources, globalization challenges, and environmental degradation. The Middle East and North ...Africa (MENA) economies are rich in mineral resources. Economic globalization has put the MENA countries in the spotlight for the developed world. Despite the status of being a hotspot for mineral resource richness, there is limited research on the effect of natural resources and economic globalization on the environmental degradation of the MENA countries. This paper examines the effects of natural resource abundance and economic globalization on environmental quality by considering trade openness, urbanization, and economic growth from the year 1980 to 2018. We apply second‐generation panel cointegration techniques along with continuously updated fully modified (Cup‐FM) and continuously updated bias‐corrected (Cup‐BC) techniques. The findings show that natural resource abundance significantly improves environmental quality. Likewise, economic globalization also mitigates emissions levels in the MENA countries. In contrast, trade openness, urbanization, and economic growth significantly deteriorate environmental quality. The unidirectional link indicates natural resources and economic globalization create trade openness. The paper provides novel empirical evidence and policy recommendations for sustainable development goals.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
•Inner Peripheries potentialities towards Rural Development Policy are assessed.•Indicators’ set aligned with Rural Development Policy targets is created and tested.•Different rural development ...progresses are based on local barriers and drivers.•Ex-ante assessment supports planning for rural development from local to EU scale.
Inner Peripheries is a recent concept based on both peripherality and marginality features, thus far from the commonly adopted geographical notion of periphery. Inner Peripheries are fragile territories covering rural Europe, which suffer from depopulation, low economic potential, and weak territorial cohesion. However, these territories are extremely important for the provision of goods and services, and the stewardship of natural and semi-natural environments. Such dichotomous condition poses several challenges for planning in the EU context, particularly regarding the implementation of the Rural Development Policy. Therefore, current planning needs to contextualize the policy implementation by considering local needs and territorial resources in the Inner Peripheries. With a focus on the Italian case, the main aim of the present work is to explore to what extent Inner Peripheries cope with Rural Development targets, in the light of improving the effectiveness of planning interventions. We create and implement a set of context indicators to describe the Inner Peripheries’ territorial characteristics through fine scale analyses and test their alignment with the Rural Development Policy through ANOVA and PCA. The results show that the indicators’ set is significant and robust in depicting the current territorial potentialities and limitations of the Inner Peripheries towards strengthening rural development. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the Inner Peripheries exhibit alignments and misalignments with rural development targets, depending on localities, and exogenous and endogenous characteristics. We find that the Inner Peripheries in Italy need to develop holistic strategies incorporating different Rural Development Priorities, such as increased competitiveness in agriculture and forestry sectors, sustainable use of resources and climate adaptation, which may also contribute to foster territorial cohesion. We argue that strategies with less consideration of environmental and social aspects may be counterproductive for the local development in Inner Peripheries. Performing an ex-ante assessment of the main characteristics of the Inner Peripheries through e.g. the use of the indicators’ framework as proposed, may support the decision-making processes in selecting planning priorities. Considering the large replicability and comparability of the indicators’ set, the findings of the present study are useful to further understand how rural development is considered in territorial strategies for Inner Peripheries in similar contexts in Europe.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Improving environmental quality and fiscal management has become one of the utmost imperative policy agendas for sustainable development. Although many studies explore multiple deriving factors of ...environmental sustainability; however, very little is known regarding the impact of composite (revenue and expenditure) fiscal decentralisation (FD) on environmental quality. Manifestly, the intergovernmental fiscal relations advocate to ensure the alignment of tax and spending powers to promote sustainable and inclusive growth. Therefore, we explore the asymmetric linkages between composite FD, green innovation, institutional governance and carbon emissions in 32 OECD countries. Our preliminary results confirm non‐linearity and structural changes in data, which instigate us to apply the asymmetric method of moments quantile regression. The overall findings exhibit that composite FD significantly mitigates carbon emissions only at medium to higher (5th–9th) emissions quantiles. In contrast, green innovation reduces carbon emissions from lower to medium (1st–5th) emissions quantiles. Institutional reforms promote environmental sustainability across all emissions quantiles (1st–9th). Interestingly, the emissions‐reducing effect of composite FD, green innovation and institutional governance is highest for higher emissions quantiles and lowest for lower emissions quantiles. These results provide valuable policy recommendations for all stakeholders.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Ensuring a balance between economic and ecological well-being has emerged as a key concern for governments worldwide. In the contemporary era, the global economies, especially the developing ones, ...emphasize the relevance of achieving eco-friendly growth whereby the ecological footprint figures are aimed to be contained alongside higher economic growth. However, in the majority of the cases, the developing countries are flourishing economically but are struggling to curb their ecological footprint levels. Against this backdrop, this study aimed to check whether or not technological innovation, natural resource consumption, globalization, economic growth, human capital development, and financial development influence the ecological footprint figures in 73 developing countries over the period from 1990 to 2016. Besides, to capture the possible heterogeneity of the outcomes, this study also conducted the analysis using sub-samples of countries belonging to the Asian, African, and Latin American and Caribbean regions. Moreover, in order to estimate the robust and reliable outcomes, this study employed the second-generation panel unit root and long-run cointegration tests. The overall results indicated that the variables have a mixed order of integration and are cointegrated. On the other hand, the long-run regression outcomes show that natural resource consumption significantly increases ecological footprint while technological innovations help to inhibit them. In addition, technological innovation was evidenced to exert a moderating effect to reduce the negative environmental consequences associated with natural resource consumption. Interestingly, these findings are homogenous for countries across all three regions. Also, globalization was witnessed to reduce the ecological footprint of African and Latin American countries only. Besides, the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is verified for the African and the Latin American and Caribbean nations but not for the cases of the Asian countries. Lastly, financial development was found to decrease ecological footprints overall, and for the Asian countries but not for the African and Latin American and Caribbean countries. Among the major policy recommendations, this study suggests the governments of the developing nations to adopt relevant policies regarding making efficient use of natural resources through technological innovations. In addition, the future human capital development, globalization, economic growth, and financial development policies should be aligned with the sustainable environmental development objectives.
•Macroeconomic determinants of EF in developing countries are evaluated.•Natural resources and financial development increase the EF.•Technological innovations reduce EF.•Technological innovation moderates between technological innovation and EF.•The EKC hypothesis for EF is valid for developing economies.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
This paper introduces the strategic approach to regulating personal data and the normative foundations of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation ('GDPR'). We explain the genesis of ...the GDPR, which is best understood as an extension and refinement of existing requirements imposed by the 1995 Data Protection Directive; describe the GDPR's approach and provisions; and make predictions about the GDPR's implications. We also highlight where the GDPR takes a different approach than U.S. privacy law. The GDPR is the most consequential regulatory development in information policy in a generation. The GDPR brings personal data into a detailed regulatory regime, that will influence personal data usage worldwide. Understood properly, the GDPR encourages firms to develop information governance frameworks, to in-house data use, and to keep humans in the loop in decision making. Companies with direct relationships with consumers have strategic advantages under the GDPR, compared to third party advertising firms on the internet. To reach these objectives, the GDPR uses big sticks, structural elements that make proving violations easier, but only a few carrots. The GDPR will complicate and restrain some information-intensive business models. But the GDPR will also enable approaches previously impossible under less-protective approaches.
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BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, PRFLJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
•Examines when implementing agencies of development projects comply with donor governments’ human rights policies.•Uses machine learning to collect data on human rights mainstreaming from 761 ...proposals of German development projects.•Most projects implement measures for preventing human rights abuses but do not actively promote human rights standards.•The policy sector and the implementing agency’s organizational context explain variation in human rights mainstreaming.•If a partner government violates human rights, agencies prioritize promoting marginalized groups over state actors.
When are human rights integrated into bilateral development cooperation projects? While researchers investigated human rights mainstreaming in development policy and the allocation of foreign aid across states, we lack systematic evidence of effective implementation of human rights mainstreaming at project level. Drawing on principal-agent-theory, we formulate expectations on the conditions under which implementing agencies of development projects comply with donor governments’ requirement for human rights mainstreaming. Using supervised text classification and mixed effects regressions on 761 German development project proposals, we find that mainstreaming is incomplete across projects and primarily focusses on measures to prevent abuses rather than to proactively promote human rights. Implementing agencies better comply with mainstreaming policies in sectors whose objectives are linked to human right priorities, e.g., in the health or education sectors. Human rights mainstreaming also becomes more likely if agencies have more organizational resources and less autonomy from the donor government. The human rights record of the partner government does not influence the extent of human rights mainstreaming but affects how exactly mainstreaming is implemented. Specifically, when partner governments violate human rights, implementing agencies avoid working with state actors and prioritize empowering marginalized groups. This suggests that implementing agencies bypass state actors to reduce the operational and political costs of integrating human rights in development projects. Our findings underscore the need to be attentive to the costs of human rights mainstreaming for development cooperation agencies and implement better follow-up and donor enforcement mechanisms to close the gap between donors’ human rights commitments and effective implementation at project level.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The digital economy spatial distribution (DESD) analysis and urban development differ from the traditional pattern of a core-edge spatial model, highlighting the importance of a policy paradigm in a ...digital era. There are few empirical studies on the digital economy and urban development, especially urban development driven by the digital economy and the overall urbanisation. This paper attempts to reveal the policy guidance of DESD and its relationship with urban development. The primary objective is to figure out the DESD and urban development pattern, which could provide references for cities that want to realise city transformations through an upgrading process of both the economy and the city. Using an integrated approach that combines the policy analysis and several geographic outcomes, Hangzhou's DESD and urban development were studied based on three timestamps of 2001, 2010, and 2017. Subsequently, the spatial econometric and VAR methods were applied further to comprehend the digital economy and overall urbanisation. The discoveries reveal that the policy-oriented development strategy is conducive to breaking the constraints of the core-edge structure. However, the urban development driven by the digital economy and the urbanisation in general of Hangzhou is not entirely consistent. Under the dual role of economic policy and urban strategy, the digital economy plays a much more critical role in shaping urban spatial than urbanisation in general.
•The economics and geographic methods are used to implement the study above 224 listed digital economy companies.•The pace of urban development and digital economy spatial distribution of Hangzhou are consistent.•The overall situation of Hangzhou digital economy is in a total agglomeration state.•The policy-oriented development model is an indispensable driven factor.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP