We examine the relationship between trade openness and the environment in a cross-country panel, using the emission of particulate matter (PM10) as the basic indicator of environmental quality. The ...panel cointegration test results show a long-run relationship between particulate matter emissions, trade openness, and economic growth. We find that increased trade openness leads to environmental degradation for the global sample. However, the results differ according to the income of countries. Trade openness has a benign effect on the environment in high-income countries, but a harmful effect in middle- and low-income countries. These results are generally robust to different measures of trade openness and environmental quality. Interestingly and significantly, the results are consistent with the popular notion that rich countries dump their pollution on poor countries. Finally, we find evidence of a feedback effect between trade openness and particulate matter emissions for the global sample as well as different income groups of countries.
•Relation between trade and the environment is examined for 98 countries.•A long-run relationship exists among pollutant emissions, openness, and growth.•Openness appears to lead to environmental degradation for the global sample.•The relationships differ according to the income of countries.•A feedback effect between trade openness and pollutant emissions exists.
Stretchable and conformal humidity sensors that can be attached to the human body for continuously monitoring the humidity of the environment around the human body or the moisture level of the human ...skin can play an important role in electronic skin and personal healthcare applications. However, most stretchable humidity sensors are based on the geometric engineering of non-stretchable components and only a few detailed studies are available on stretchable humidity sensors under applied mechanical deformations. In this paper, we propose a transparent, stretchable humidity sensor with a simple fabrication process, having intrinsically stretchable components that provide high stretchability, sensitivity, and stability along with fast response and relaxation time. Composed of reduced graphene oxide-polyurethane composites and an elastomeric conductive electrode, this device exhibits impressive response and relaxation time as fast as 3.5 and 7 s, respectively. The responsivity and the response and relaxation time of the device in the presence of humidity remain almost unchanged under stretching up to a strain of 60% and after 10,000 stretching cycles at a 40% strain. Further, these stretchable humidity sensors can be easily and conformally attached to a finger for monitoring the humidity levels of the environment around the human body, wet objects, or human skin.
•Examine the impact of financial inclusion on CO2 emissions in Asia from 2004 to 2014.•Three proxies of financial inclusion are built based on principal component analysis.•Estimate the model by ...Hoechle (2007) procedure for Driscoll-Kraay standard errors.•Financial inclusion appears to have led to higher emissions of CO2 in the region.•No policy synergies were found between financial inclusion and mitigating emissions.
This study examines the impact of financial inclusion on CO2 emissions using a sample of 31 Asian countries during the period 2004–2014. Three composite indicators for financial inclusion are constructed using principal component analysis (PCA) based on normalized variables. To estimate the model, we adopted the Hoechle (2007) procedure which produces Driscoll-Kraay standard errors for linear panel models that are not only heteroskedasticity consistent but also robust to general forms of cross-sectional dependence. We find that income, energy consumption, industrialization, urbanization, FDI and financial inclusion appear to have led to higher emissions of CO2 in the region. Meanwhile, increased openness to trade seems to have reduced CO2 emissions. The findings are qualitatively robust to different proxies of financial inclusions and reasonable modifications to specification of the model. The empirical results imply that there are currently no policy synergies between growing financial inclusion and mitigating CO2 emissions. Thus, financial inclusion should be integrated into climate change adaptation strategies at local, national and regional levels, especially to address the side effect of higher CO2 emissions associated with improved financial inclusion.
Despite the benefits of gaining citizenship, many eligible immigrants in the United States are not naturalizing. In this article, we examine factors that lead to naturalization in the United States, ...finding that immigrants’ pathways to citizenship are simultaneously shaped by individual characteristics, place-based attributes, and family dynamics. Of notable significance, and largely omitted from previous empirical work on naturalization, we find that having a naturalized spouse prior to one’s own naturalization is associated with a higher probability of naturalization, whereas being married to an undocumented immigrant reduces the probability of naturalization. Similarly, having a naturalized adult in the family other than a spouse improves the odds of naturalization, but having an undocumented family member other than a spouse reduces the odds. These findings suggest that while eligible immigrants with naturalized family members are more likely to improve their access to naturalization through pooled resources and increased information sharing, eligible immigrants with undocumented family members are more likely to avoid the naturalization process entirely, likely due to chilling effects from immigrant enforcement and policies that target close ties with liminal legality. These findings suggest that immigrants’ access to citizenship could be improved by (1) reaching immigrants who are the first in their families to naturalize and (2) improving the context of reception for undocumented immigrants and mixed-status families. More broadly, while individual factors play a role in naturalization, complex contextual factors, including place and family, shape immigrants’ pathways to citizenship and provide opportunities for new policies to promote immigrant integration.
This study aims to reexamine how energy consumption interacts with economic growth and emissions using a panel data of a global sample consisting of 102 countries, from 1996 to 2012. The effects of ...renewable energy and nonrenewable energy sources are separately examined. The consumption of both renewable and nonrenewable energy appears to have contributed significantly to the level of income across countries, implying that promoting renewable energy benefits economic development. The empirical evidence suggests that the use of non-renewable energy consumption significantly raised the level of emissions across different income groups of countries. On the other hand, our findings suggest that the use of renewable energy sources helped tackle emissions in developed countries but not in developing countries. The success of developed countries in controlling emissions through renewable energy has significant policy implications for developing countries.
Tourism development seems to have mixed effects on the level of CO2 emissions across the globe. This study thus provides international evidence on the impacts of tourism on carbon dioxide emissions ...in countries of arrival. We employ a
large panel of 95 countries, consisting of three subsamples of countries classified by income level over the period
1998-
2014. The theoretical framework of this study is built based on an extended version of STIRPAT model combined with the EKC. The empirical results are following: (i) tourism (receipts and number of arrivals) reduces total CO2 emissions and CO2 emission from electricity and heat production in the countries of arrival; (ii) tourism increases CO2 emissions from transport, while the number of tourist arrivals increases CO2 emissions per capita; and (iii) The effects of tourism on emissions vary across different income levels. At the global level, tourism appears to increase CO2 emissions from transportation, suggesting that special attention should be paid to supporting green transportation infrastructure technologies and practices in the tourism industry. Overall, there is room for improvement in tourism management in countries of all income levels to promote the development of low-
carbon
tourism products and services.
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•The factors causing the historic oil price fluctuation during the Covid-19 pandemic are examined.•The ARDL bounds testing approach incorporating a structural break is applied to the ...daily series.•Increases in Covid-19 cases, US EPU, and the VIX contribute to the decline in WTI prices.•The fall in the global stock markets appears to significantly reduce the WTI crude oil price.•The oil price war and speculation on oil futures also led to the collapse of the oil markets.
On 20 April 2020, the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price dropped to negative levels for the first time in history. This study examines the factors underlying the historic oil price fluctuation during the Covid-19 pandemic. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach incorporating a structural break is applied to the daily series from 17 January to 14 September 2020 to analyze long-run relationships and short-run dynamics. The results reveal that increases in Covid-19 pandemic cases, US economic policy uncertainty, and expected stock market volatility contributed to the fall in the WTI crude oil price, whereas the fall in the global stock markets appears to significantly reduce the fall. Furthermore, the Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war and speculation on oil futures are shown to play a critical part in the collapse of the oil markets. The findings are consistent with our expectations. Although it is reasonable to assume that the solution to this oil crisis is a pick-up in global oil demand, which will occur only when the novel coronavirus is defeated, this study proposes policy recommendations to cope with the current oil price crash.
Antibiotic residues, antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are considered new classes of water contaminants due to their potential adverse effects on aquatic ...ecosystems and human health. This paper provides comprehensive data on the occurrences of 19 antibiotics, bacteria resistant to 10 antibiotics, and 15 ARGs in raw influent and different treatment stages of conventional activated sludge (CAS) and membrane bioreactor (MBR) systems. Seventeen out of the 19 target antibiotics were detected in raw influent with concentrations of up to ten micrograms per liter. Concentrations of antibiotics measured in the secondary effluent were much lower compared to those in the raw influent. Among the antibiotics, amoxicillin, azithromycin, ciprofloxacin, chloramphenicol, meropenem, minocycline, oxytetracycline, sulfamethazine and vancomycin had highest removal by CAS or MBR systems with median removal efficiency (RE) > 70%, while trimethoprim and lincomycin were recalcitrant in the CAS system with median RE <50%. Similarly, the target ARB and ARGs were omnipresent in the raw influent samples with average concentrations as high as 2.6 × 106 CFU/mL and 2.0 × 107 gene copies/mL, respectively. The concentrations of ARB in secondary effluent of the CAS system declined relative to the raw influent (i.e. lower than raw influent by 2–3 orders of magnitude) and no ARB were detected in the MF permeate of the MBR system. For ARGs, their concentrations in secondary effluent/MF permeate ranged from below method quantification limit (<MQL) to 104 gene copies/mL. It is noteworthy that several ARGs, i.e. blaKPC, blaNDM, blaSHV, ermB, intI1, sul1 and tetO, were still found in the MF permeate of the MBR system at average concentrations up to 103 copies/mL. In conclusion, MBR outperformed CAS in the elimination of ARB, ARGs and most target antibiotics.
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•Most of 19 targeted antibiotic residues were detected.•Antibiotic residues were mainly removed in primary clarifier & Modified Ludzack-Ettinger tank.•ARB and ARG were removed more efficient in MF than in secondary clarifier.•Some ARGs encoding carbapenemase still persist in MBR effluent.
Emerging work in fiscal sociology examines the intersection of race/ethnicity, inequality and taxation, and suggests that localities are increasingly turning to nontax alternatives such as fines, ...fees and forfeitures to fill revenue gaps and service demands. These revenue sources are regressive and discriminatory as they disproportionately affect low-income racially/ethnically minoritised groups. We assess the extent to which local municipalities in California are more dependent on regressive nontax revenue sources, and if increases are correlated with a city’s racial/ethnic composition. We use fixed-effects estimators on panel fiscal data from the California State Controller Office’s Cities Annual Reports between 2002 and 2016 for our analysis. We further exploit our time period to determine how fiscal crises like the Great Recession compound race/ethnicity-driven finance disparities. Our results suggest the proportion of Latinx/Hispanic in a city’s population is positively and statistically associated with an increase in a city’s reliance on fines, fees and forfeitures. These results suggest concerns of discriminatory and regressive revenue sourcing by local governments that further perpetuate racial inequality and poverty. In aggregate, relative to other years in our analysis, the growth rate of fines, fees and forfeitures as a portion of total own-source revenue saw higher increases during the Great Recession, a time of heightened financial insecurity among low-income, Latinx/Hispanic and Black households.
This study examines the constraints to the uptake of Solar Home Systems (SHS) in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam. SHS are photovoltaic systems which generate electricity for residential properties. ...The limited numbers of SHS installed in HCMC are mostly on-grid systems with backup batteries to supply electricity to residential properties during evenings and/or power cuts. Semi-structured interviews with SHS installers, manufacturers and users, plus government agencies and technical experts identify pricing, regulatory issues and the cost of systems as major constraints. Cost-benefit analysis is then used to estimate the financial rates of return and payback periods for three representative SHS. Introducing net metering with a price equal to the proposed tariff of VND 3250/kWh would generate financial rates of return of over 7.5% and shorten the payback periods for the two larger systems from more than 30 years to 12 or 13 years. Smaller off-grid kits are already competitive with small, stand-alone diesel or gasoline generators. In the next five years, reforms to Vietnam's electricity market can be expected to green the energy mix and make SHS more finally attractive. SHS therefore represent a promising technology for HCMC in the future.
•This study examines the constraints to uptake of Solar Home Systems (SHS) in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam.•SHS installed in HCMC are mostly on-grid systems with backup batteries.•Pricing, regulatory issues and the cost of systems are the main constraints to uptake.•Introducing net metering with the tier-4-residential-tariff price increases financial rates of return and halves payback periods.•Upcoming reforms to Vietnam's electricity market make SHS a promising technology for the future.
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