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Climate change has steadily gained attention as the global economy has grown more quickly, preventing continued high-quality economic growth. In this context, the eco-innovation concept has recently risen to the top of the list of academic research topics since it is a crucial tool that combines reduced environmental effects with a favourable socioeconomic impact. Nevertheless, the environmental situation is not improving despite the increasing eco-innovation level. From one perspective, instead of concentrating on how eco-innovation lessens carbon emissions, this research explores the indirect effect of carbon emissions on the GDP-eco-innovation nexus. From another perspective, since FDI might lessen harmful pollution, this research analyses the indirect effect of FDI on the economic growth-eco-innovation nexus. Therefore, this paper highlights the relationship between eco-innovation and economic growth (GDP), considering the dual mediating roles of carbon emissions and FDI. First, we examine the effects of GDP on eco-innovation activities in nine MENA countries from 2000 to 2019 using the geographic Durbin model based on spatial panel data. Second, this paper analysed the dual mediating effect of carbon emissions and FDI using the spatial stepwise regression model. The findings of this paper are as follows: (i) GDP positively impacts eco-innovation activities, and (ii) carbon emissions and FDI mediate the GDP-eco-innovation nexus. Therefore, GDP, FDI, and carbon emissions are significant drivers of eco-innovation. This research represents an essential step towards a better understanding of the need to support the transition to sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guangdong has become the province with the second largest energy consumption and the largest gross domestic product in China. Studying the energy intensity to realise the sustainable development goal of Guangdong is important. Numerous studies on energy intensity hold a common assumption that regions are spatially independent from a static and macro perspective of the country, which may not always be the case. This study focuses on investigating the spatial aggregation and determinants of Guangdong's energy intensity using the panel data on city level from 2005 to 2016 from a spatial perspective. A novel approach based on the Global Moran-Index (Moran's I) and Durbin model was proposed to deal with the dilemma. From the analytical results, the findings are as follows: (1) Guangdong's energy intensity indicates a strong spatial correlation and clear spatial agglomeration characteristics; (2) Economic growth is the most important influential factor of energy intensity in Guangdong, whereas foreign direct investment has the least impact; (3) The spillover effect of technological progress is significant and can effectively reduce regional energy intensity. Moreover, the study provides references for the implementation of enhancing energy utilisation efficiency. • Spatial correlation and aggregation of energy intensity among cities are confirmed. • Economic growth is the most important factor driving energy intensity. • The direct effect and the overall effect of FDI on energy intensity are opposite. • Technology spillover has been proved to promote regional sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the promotion of technology business incubators (TBIs) has been regarded as an effective strategy utilized by governments to facilitate technology innovation and sustainable economic growth, few studies have considered the network structure of TBIs when measuring their operational performance. In this study, we first propose a dynamic two-stage slacks-based measure model to assess the sustainable efficiency of incubators by decomposing the operational process into investment attraction stage and incubation stage. Within this framework, we treat incubating fund and new entrants as intermediate products, and regard the number of incubating enterprises as an undesirable output of the incubation stage to capture the carry-over effect between two successive periods. We then introduce the definitions of the period, stage and period stage efficiencies. The proposed method is employed to estimate the operational performance of China's regional state-level technology business incubating service systems during 2013–2017. The results show that the negligence of the dynamic effect of the typical carry-over factor may lead to the underestimation of the incubating service systems' overall efficiency as well as the efficiency of the incubation stage. The relatively lower incubation efficiency is the main reason for the inefficiency of Chinese technology business incubating service system. Moreover, significant geographic disparities in efficiencies among regions are observed. The western area enjoys the best performance, followed by the eastern area, while the central area performs the worst. We further explore the influencing factors on the efficiencies of incubating service systems and find that human capital is conducive to the improvement in the efficiencies of the two sub-stages. However, government support and technology progress contribute significantly to the investment attraction stage, while foreign direct investment has a positive effect only on the incubation stage. Finally, some useful policy implications are achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing a comprehensive policy framework for ascertaining sustainable development is a problem faced by most of the countries around the globe, and the developed nations are no exception to that. Environmental awareness-oriented policy design for achieving sustainable development goals is a challenge for the developed nations, and there lies the contribution of this study. This study analyzes the impact of renewable energy on carbon emissions, in presence of education, natural resource abundance, foreign direct investment, and economic growth for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries over the period of 1990–2015. Second generation methodologies are adapted for the empirical estimation. The results show the stimulating role of renewable energy consumption in shaping environmental quality. Education declines carbon emissions. Natural resource abundance and foreign direct investment deteriorate environmental quality. Moreover, the time series individual country analysis also confirms that renewable energy has a positive impact on economic growth. The heterogeneous causality analysis reveals the feedback effect, i.e., bidirectional causal associations among carbon emissions, education, and renewable energy consumption. This empirical evidence suggests that countries should increase investment in education and renewable energy sectors and plan for research and development in renewable energy for ensuring environmental sustainability. Image 1 • This study analyzes the impact of educational attainment on carbon emissions. • Study has been done for 27 OECD countries over the period of 1990–2015. • Results show stimulating role of educational attainment in shaping environmental quality. • Natural resource abundance and FDI deteriorates environmental quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between renewable energy consumption, non-renewable energy consumption, foreign direct investment, economic growth and carbon emissions for the nine countries (i.e., Denmark, Finland, France, India, Italy, Morocco, Norway, Portugal, Sweden) identified in the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2018 report. This study mainly aims to demonstrate the role of renewable energy consumption and foreign direct investment on CO2 emissions in countries with high scores in the CCPI using the newly developed bootstrap autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. For this purpose, the unit root properties of the variables are determined by sharp and smooth structural break unit root test (SOR, Shahbaz et. al., 2018). We then conduct a bootstrap ARDL test developed by McNown et al. (2018) to investigate the existence of cointegration. We also use Granger causality based on the bootstrap ARDL approach to identify causal relationships between variables. Empirical analysis results show only a few cointegration relationships between variables exist. However, we have identified significant long-term relationships between foreign direct investment, renewable energy consumption and economic growth in some countries, and our study includes important policy implications, particularly for relationship among CO2 emissions and foreign direct investment inflows. • We found evidence in favour of pollution haven hypothesis. • The role of fdi and renewable energy consumption in growth-emissions nexus is analyzed using bootstrap ARDL modelling. • We use Granger causality approach based on the bootstrap ARDL approach. • We analyze Denmark, Finland, France, India, Italy, Morocco, Norway, Portugal, Sweden according to the CCPI18. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]