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This paper explores the impact of the political hierarchies of cities in China from different perspectives. First, we examine the economic disparities between prefectural cities and municipalities. Furthermore, this paper draws upon a quasi‐ experiment to analyze the impact of upgrading Chongqing to a municipality in 1997 using the synthetic control method. The city‐upgrading policy significantly increased Chongqing's gross domestic product (GDP) in the following 4 years. Finally, we find that the policy increased GDP in treated cities within 1200 km of Chongqing by about 10%–13% relative to the control cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy, being one of the significant drivers of growth, has gained much focus in the last four decades. A connection between energy and growth exists in the economy: on the one hand, energy is a vital factor of production while growth improves living standards, which increases energy consumption on the other hand. Previous studies on the energy‐growth nexus paid less attention to sectorial differentials in the consumption of energy and growth. Also, the literature could not relate that to sustainable development. Thus, this study explores the sectorial differentials in energy consumption and how they affect the energy‐growth nexus within the context of sustainable development. The research employed secondary data for 46 sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) countries for the period 2007 to 2020. Using the General Methods of Moments estimation technique, we found that all the measures of energy consumption positively affect economic growth. Also, CO2 intensity is positively related to growth in the economy while CO2 emissions from solid fuels negatively affect economic growth. Again, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is positively impacting economic growth and Gross Domestic Product (SSA) per energy use. Policy implications are discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses multilevel analysis of 24 European countries to examine the effects of macroeconomic variables (GDP and unemployment) and welfare state interventions (active and passive labour market policies) on job insecurity and job quality in Europe from the mid‐1990s until the last 2021 COVID crisis. The paper makes a distinction between the crisis of the welfare state and the reaction of welfare states to crises and connects the job quality literature with that on the transformation of the welfare state. The article introduces several innovations to the literature by looking at the impact of welfare state interventions on multidimensional job quality, distinguishing between different types of active labour market policy spending and considering the generosity of benefits. The findings show that active labour market policies (ALMPs) and passive labour market policies (PLMPs) have a positive effect in reducing job insecurity across skill groups. ALMPs and PLMPs also improved several dimensions of job quality, but mostly among manual/low‐skilled workers, while they have a negative effect on work pressure which mostly affects medium‐ and high‐skilled workers. The article concludes by discussing how, due to the reach of ALMP and PLMP interventions, the positive effects of the welfare state on job quality are concentrated among lower‐skilled workers, thereby limiting the ambition of contemporary welfare states to generate positive spillover effects on the quality of work for all workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of the main criterion employed by the European Commission for the allocation of the largest portion of Structural Funds, based on the threshold of the 75% of European Union (EU) average gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. We focus on the 2014–2020 programming period and on EU‐15 regions to analyze if this criterion has penalized some of them, as a consequence of the 2004 EU enlargement, which has represented an exogenous shock in the allocation process, due to the economic backwardness of new member states. Through the application of Synthetic Control Methods and Difference‐in‐Differences estimators at different geographical scales, we show that regions that did not obtain the less developed status in both the programming period 2007–2013 and 2014–2020, but that would have obtained it in the period 2014–2020 without the 2004 EU enlargement, experienced a significantly lower GDP per capita growth between −10.5% and −5.7%. Conversely, territories that in the period 2014–2020 lost the less developed status, previously obtained in the time frame 2007–2013, were not characterized by a significantly lower economic growth, providing some evidence of the effectiveness of the safety net. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]