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A significant corridor under the "Belt and Road Initiative" is announced by the government of China for numerous transport and energy projects. China focuses greatly on the sustainability of these projects, in accordance with Green Investment Principles. For this, environmental, social, governance, and technological considerations are taken into account. This paper offers a novel assessment of the impact of green sustainability under BRI and the current emission scenario in Pakistan. The question that needs to be addressed here is whether the projects under Belt and Road Initiative are as environment friendly as they claim. In the first phase of this study, we review theories establishing evidence based on existing literature to determine the influence of Belt and Road on economic development. In the next phase, we use Environment Kuznets Curve and apply estimates from Johansson's Cointegration Test to quantify the present environmental scenario of Pakistan and probable environmental risk portrayed by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This paper helps in determining the relationship between carbon emission and three major variables including energy consumption, economic growth, and foreign direct investment (FDI). Cointegration analysis is applied on time series data comprising of a 40 years' period from 1979 to 2019. The paper finds that (i) the belt and road corridors could substantially improve trade, foreign investment, and living conditions for citizens in participating countries; (ii) moreover, this study confirms the presence of one cointegrated equation suggesting the presence of a long term relationship between the CO2 and independent variables and a short run association running from EnC to CO2. The study also proposes a Green BRI Model which formulates a body that devises environmental performance standards, reviews procedures, and ensures that they get implemented on all CPEC projects. The Belt and Road Initiative increases emissions among participating countries. China and corridor economies need to adopt strict policy reforms that increase transparency, expand trade, improve debt sustainability, and mitigate environmental, social, and corruption risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic development leads to the widespread use of energy, which results in carbon emissions. In order to determine the correlation between different urban carbon emissions and fiscal growth, a coupling and coordination model of urban carbon emissions and economic growth based on discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is constructed. According to the coupling and coordinated development characteristics of economic growth and carbon emissions, the evaluation index system of the regional economy and carbon emissions is constructed. This paper examines the proportion of primary energy consumption and the influencing factors of carbon emission in a city and constructs the economic growth computational intelligence model and urban carbon emission model. The coupling degree among economic growth, carbon emission, and energy consumption is studied; the coupling standard between economic growth and energy consumption carbon emission is determined; and the carbon emission factor under the method of DFT is introduced. The coupling coordination model between economic growth and carbon emission is constructed, and the interaction mechanism between carbon emission, economic development, and environmental protection is determined. The experimental findings demonstrate that when energy consumption intensity and carbon emission are relatively low, the model's change in the trend of coupling coordination index is comparable with the real/actual condition and the model is more reliable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is widely recognized that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows have a dominant effect on economic growth of host countries, the determinants of FDI inflows are still unclear. Especially, about the effect of exchange rate on FDI inflow, the results reached by scholars vary across countries or regions. It is of great practical and theoretical significance to explore the influencing effects of exchange rate on FDI inflow and identify the mechanisms that underlie them in close association with regional economic characters so as to help local government implement targeted government policies to achieve sustainable FDI inflow and sustainable economic growth. For this purpose, the influencing effects and the influencing mechanisms of the exchange rate on FDI inflows are investigated for Zhejiang province, China, over 1985–2019 by employing the co-integration tests, vector error correction models, Granger causality tests, and impulse response tests. Empirical results indicate that there are long-term stable and unidirectional causal relationship between the exchange rate and FDI inflow. Continuous appreciation of RMB against USD discourages FDI inflow. The mechanism which underlies the long-term relationship is the wealth effect, rather than the cost effect or the demand effect. By contrast, in the short run, neither the exchange rate nor the three influencing mechanism has a significant impact on FDI inflow. These results suggest policy recommendations for improving FDI by accumulating human capital and improving infrastructure. These findings are also applicable for other countries or regions with similar economic characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately forecasting China's total electricity consumption is of great significance for the government in formulating sustainable economic development policies, especially, China as the largest total electricity consumption country in the world. The calculation method of the background value of the GM(1, 1) model is an important factor of unstable model performance. In this paper, an extrapolation method with variable weights was used for calculating the background value to eliminate the influence of the extreme values on the performance of the GM(1, 1) model, and the novel extrapolation-based grey prediction model called NEGM(1, 1) was proposed and optimized. The NEGM(1, 1) model was then used to simulate the total electricity consumption in China and found to outperform other grey models. Finally, the total electricity consumption of China from 2018 to 2025 was forecasted. The results show that China's total electricity consumption will be expected to increase slightly, but the total is still very large. For this, some corresponding recommendations to ensure the effective supply of electricity in China are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accuracy of time series forecasting is more important and can assist organizations to take up-to-date decisions for better planning and management. Several classical econometrics and computational approaches show promising results for the ordinary time series forecasting tasks, but they are not satisfactory in crude oil price forecasting. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) not only resolves the problem of nonlinearity and nonstationarity of time series prediction but also creates some problems (i.e., mood mixing and splitting). In this study, we proposed a new hybrid method that combines the median ensemble empirical mode decomposition and group method of data handling (MEEMD-GMDH) to reduce mood splitting problems and forecast crude oil price. MEEMD is achieved by replacing the mean operator with the median operator during the EEMD process. For testing and validation purposes of the different models, the two-seat stamp benchmarked crude oil price data are used (i.e., Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI)). To check the proposed model performance, different evaluation measures are used including Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), and Diebold-Mariano (DM) test. All the forecasting accuracy measures confirmed that our proposed model performs well in crude oil prices forecasting as compared to other hybrid models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consistent estimation techniques need to be implemented to obtain robust empirical outcomes which help policymakers formulating public policies. Therefore, we implement the least squares (LS) and the high breakdown robust least trimmed squares (LTS) regression techniques, while using econometric regression model based on a growth equation for the two countries, namely, India and Pakistan. We used secondary annual time series data which covers a long period of 41 years. The adequacy of the time series econometric model was checked through cointegration analysis and found that there is no spurious regression. Classical and robust procedures were employed for the estimation of the parameters. The empirical results reveal that the overall fit of the model improves in case of LTS technique, while the significance of the predictors changes significantly in cases of both countries due to the removal of outliers from the data. Thus, empirical findings exhibit that the results, obtained through LTS, are better than LS techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bitcoin exchange rate (BER) is influenced by many variables such as human speculation and policies and, thus, is dependent on the financial system. The fluctuation of BER submitted has been extensively investigated. However, the correlation analysis of the short- and long-term effects by indicators of online sentiment is unexplored. Therefore, this study establishes a VAR model for BER which provides a framework to the Google search volume index (SVI), the investor fear gauge (VIX), and the S&P500 Index. The findings of the analysis suggest that BER and Google SVI have a Granger causality feedback relationship in both the short- and long-term co-integration equilibrium, and the VIX is significantly related to BER in the long-term co-integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the role of renewable energy consumption and other environmental factors in carbon emission have got considerable attention recently, and they are predicted to get exaggerated in the coming decades. Energy usage increases economic growth and development of a country and backs to global warming and carbon emission which affect the local environment. For the prosperity of a country, it is felt crucial to measure the unavoidable impacts which effect environmental quality. Consequently, the current study investigates the interrelationship of renewable energy consumption, carbon dioxide emission, foreign direct investment, and economic growth in 190 countries of the world for the period of 1980 to 2018. By employing both static and dynamic models, the findings indicate that carbon emission, renewable energy consumption, foreign direct investment, and economic growth affect each other significantly whereas renewable energy consumption has been found beneficial for environmental quality; however, it decreases the inflow of FDI. RE has a decreasing impact, while FDI and carbon emission promote economic growth. The study suggests the promotion of renewable energy resources and policies related to FDI to promote the quality of the environment and achieve economic growth as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interferometer is a widely used direction-finding system with high precision. When there are comprehensive disturbances in the direction-finding system, some scholars have proposed corresponding correction algorithms, but most of them require hypothesis based on the geometric position of the array. The method of using machine learning that has attracted much attention recently is data driven, which can be independent of these assumptions. We propose a direction-finding method for the interferometer by using multioutput least squares support vector regression (MLSSVR) model. The application of this method includes the following: the construction of MLSSVR model training data, training and construction of the MLSSVR model, and the estimation of direction of arrival. Finally, the method is verified through numerical simulation. When there are comprehensive deviations in the system, the direction-finding accuracy can be effectively improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]