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• More than two-thirds of the world's population are affected by the escalating issue of rising income inequality. This phenomenon is intensifying the risk of societal divisions, provoking protests in numerous countries, and impeding economic and social development. • BioTrade refers to products or services derived from biodiversity, which are commercialized and traded in a manner that upholds respect for both people and nature. • There exists a robust positive correlation between BioTrade and income inequality. However, the impact of BioTrade on inequality exhibits heterogeneity based on sub-regions and the distribution of income disparities. • The level of preparedness for advanced technologies serves as one pathway through which BioTrade influences global inequality. While empirical studies exploring the impacts of international trade on income inequality have continued to expand, yielding mixed results, less attention has been devoted to the effects of BioTrade on income redistribution. This article addresses this gap by examining the impact of BioTrade on income inequality, with a specific emphasis on the role of technological innovations. We employ a panel model encompassing 131 countries over the period 2010–2019, utilizing instrumental variable two-stage least squares and smoothed instrumental-variable quantile regression. Overall, the results indicate a strong positive link between BioTrade and income inequality, yet its effects remain heterogeneous across sub-regions and the distribution of income inequality. To elucidate this positive link, the article presents evidence of the crucial role of the level of readiness for advanced technologies. Consequently, technological innovations play a pivotal role in mitigating the accelerating effects of BioTrade on inequality. The results are robust to a battery of robustness tests, including variations in estimation methodologies, alternative measures of inequality and BioTrade, and the inclusion of control variables. These results call upon policymakers to champion technological innovations, such as Internet access and research and development, as crucial strategies for effectively and sustainably alleviating the aggravation of inequalities induced by BioTrade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the impact of financial inclusion on the instability of household consumption remains controversial. In this article, we considered the possibility that countries follow different regimes of household consumption instability and tested the hypothesis of whether financial inclusion is countercyclical or procyclical to a country's regime of consumption instability. Thus, relying on recent works that used the finite mixture regression method, we identify the different regimes of household consumption instability. Drawing on a sample of 28 developing countries over the period 2011–2020, the paper highlights that the impact of financial inclusion on consumption instability differs across classes and a three-class model best describes the sample. Specifically, we show that financial inclusion is positively associated with consumption instability in the first class, while financial inclusion significantly reduces consumption instability in the second class. Financial inclusion does not have a significant impact on the third class. Furthermore, exploring the potential role of democracy in determining class affiliation, the results emphasize that developing countries would fully benefit from financial inclusion by undertaking strong reforms to improve democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrialization constitutes one of the strategies of structural transformation in many sub‐Saharan African (SSA) countries. In this paper, we re‐examine the effect of financial development on the industrialization of 35 SSA countries over the period 1996–2018. Contrary to previous work, we formulate the hypothesis that there exists a threshold of financial development beyond which financial development positively influences industrialization. Using the dynamic panel threshold regression model, and system generalized methods of moment models, we find two main results. First, financial development has a negative and significant impact on the development of industrialization. Secondly, the findings show the existence of a nonlinear relationship between financial development and industrialization development. Thus, we find that financial development has a negative effect on industrialization below the threshold while the effect is significantly positive on industrialization in countries whose financial development is above the threshold. The results are stable to the different robustness tests used. These findings highlight the need for SSA countries to develop better financial institutions if they hope to boost the manufacturing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the possible crowding‐in or crowding‐out effect of public investment on private investment in sub‐Saharan Africa. While this relationship has been theoretically and empirically studied in the literature, most studies used traditional panel fixed effects or Generalized Method of Moments estimators which can potentially lead to biased and inconsistent estimates. We employ heterogeneous parameter models, including the Mean Group, the Common Correlated Effects Mean Group Model, and the Augmented Mean Group estimators, to incorporate the possibility of slope heterogeneity and the presence of cross‐sectional dependence. Using a large sample of 44 sub‐Saharan African countries over the period 1960–2015, we find that on average public investment crowds in private investment in sub‐Saharan Africa. We also find that the impact differs between countries and is higher in countries with a strong private sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]