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Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries are struggling with internal and external macroeconomic and social factors in their catching-up strategies to be closer, as economic wealth, to the Western developed European countries. In these ex-communist countries, institutional factors could be seen as critical for success in narrowing the income gap. The paper proposes an analysis of the impact of economic and financial development and globalization on the income gap in 11 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia) for the period of 1996 to 2019, taking into consideration institutional factors. The study analyses the variables: transition coefficient as a proxy for income gap, GDP per capita, KOF Financial Globalisation Index, Financial Development Index and World Bank Institutional Indicators in a panel approach methodology and estimation of FMOLS and DOLS equations. The paper’s findings show that all considered factors have a significant contribution to the income gap in the examined period of time. Economic and financial development, as well as institutional quality, is positively associated with the closing income gap, while globalization has a negative influence. It is also revealed the direction of the causality relationship between the considered variables: from economic and financial development, globalization and institutional quality to the income gap. These findings suggest some policy recommendations in support of the continuation of the European integration process.

The present paper empirically investigates the effects of structural change—change in labor productivity fueled by labor reallocation across industries—on relative demand for skilled workers, using the NBER-CES Manufacturing Industry Database for the period of 1958–2011. The measures unveil that the US manufacturing sectors had experienced dramatic structural change since the 1990s when labor was reallocated from high-productivity to low-productivity industries. Furthermore, we find the evidence that the growth-reducing structural change impinges positively on relative demand for skilled workers and is therefore another driving force of rising wage inequality, apart from high-tech capital investment and outsourcing activities, in the US manufacturing sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the nexus between economic growth (GDP), trade openness, remittances, exchange rate, and agricultural output in E7 (Russia, Indonesia, Mexico, China, India, Brazil, and Turkey) economies, covering the data from 1990 to 2020. In the first step, we adopted the Dumitrescu and Hurlin time domain Granger causality test, which shows that economic growth (GDP) and agriculture do not have any causal relationship, not even at 3-lags. However, uni-directional causality exists between agriculture and economic growth at the first level difference. In the second step, we used Granger causality analysis in the frequency domain, presented by Croux and Reusens, showing a bivariate correlation among economic growth, trade, remittance, and agricultural output. The panel Granger causality outcome indicated that the causality between variables with various frequencies differs. Policymakers in these economies may consider these pragmatic results to formulate valuable and appropriate short-, medium-, and long-term economic strategies.

Our paper presents the first attempt to examine the non-linear relationship between the trade value of environmental commodities (TVEC) and energy security (ESP). Seven indicators are used in this article to illustrate four aspects of energy security, namely availability, acceptability, developability, and sustainability. We conducted our analysis by applying a variety of econometric techniques to a sample of 49 countries with low-incomes and low-middle-incomes (LI&LMICs), 33 countries with upper-middle-incomes (UMICs), and 42 countries with high-incomes (HICs). A nonlinear relationship has been demonstrated between the trade of environmental commodities (TVEC) and non-fossil energy consumption, energy intensity, energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and renewable energy consumption, indicating that the trade of green goods is beneficial for energy system acceptability, develop-ability, and sustainability. There is also evidence that TVEC and ESP exhibit long-term cointegration, and our results confirm this. The effect of TVEC on ESP varies dramatically between the subsamples by income level, with high-income countries showing a more apparent nonlinear relationship between TVEC and ESP.

The global rise in energy consumption makes managing energy demands a priority. Here, the potential of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in controlling energy consumption is still debated. Within this context, the main objective of the current study is to measure the impact of ICT, its potential benefit, and environmental factors on household electricity demand in Taiwan. A panel of data from 20 cities in Taiwan was collected during the period 2004–2018. We adopted PMG estimation and applied the DH-causality test for analysis. The estimation results show that ICT, carbon emissions, and climate change will drive household electricity demand in Taiwan in the long term. However, ICT has a higher potential to reduce electricity demand in the short-term period. In addition, the results of the causality test reveal a two-way interrelationship between ICT and electricity demand. Our study also found that climate change indirectly affects the use of electricity through household appliances. We also presented several policy implications at the end of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of product ratings is significant in the experience goods market, whose intangible products are difficult to evaluate before consumption. Product ratings can reduce information asymmetries because they represent a credible signal of quality and thus positively affect product sales. In this study, we shed light on how professional critics behave by focusing on the influence of product characteristics and former reviews on rating behavior and market prices as additional quality signals in wine markets. Using 13,911 observations from professional wine tastings, we analyze 8,444 worldwide-produced wines and their ratings over 20 years. We find clear evidence to suggest that prices and product ratings are significantly related. Finally, the results suggest that review consistency evolves and determines current ratings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The share of emissions from materials has dramatically increased over the last decades and is projected to rise in the coming years. Therefore, understanding the environmental effect of materials becomes highly crucial, especially from the climate mitigation perspective. However, its effect on emissions is often overlooked and more attention is heavily paid to the energy-related policies. In this study, to address this shortcoming, we investigate the role of materials on the decoupling of carbon-dioxide emissions (CO2) from economic growth and compare it with the role of energy use in the world's top-19 emitting countries for the 1990–2019 period. Methodologically, using the logarithmic mean divisia index (LMDI) approach, we first decompose CO2 emissions into four effects based on the two different model specifications (materials and energy models). We secondly determine the impact decoupling status and efforts of countries with two different approaches: Tapio-based decoupling elasticity (TAPIO) and decoupling effort index (DEI). Our LMDI and TAPIO results show that material and energy-related efficiency effects have an inhibitory factor. However, the carbon intensity of materials has not contributed to CO2 emissions reduction and impact decoupling as much as the carbon intensity of energy has. DEI results indicate that while developed countries make relatively good progress towards decoupling, particularly after the Paris Agreement, developing countries need to further improve their mitigation efforts. Designing and implementing some policies only centering energy/material intensity or carbon intensity of energy might not be sufficient to achieve the decoupling. Both energy- and material-related strategies should be considered in harmony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selective migration does not necessarily imply a unique unidirectional or 'synchronized' flow from the poorer to the richer regions. Indeed, migration is selective to individual characteristics of migrants, but also places. Therefore, it is likely that migrants with different skill levels, age, and gender select different destinations—irrespective of regional disparities—with a greater degree of synchronization by similar individuals. The article explores these processes in Italy using inter-provincial migration flows (NUTS3) data for the years 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005 and dividing migrants into 18 categories based on their human capital (proxied by education), age, and gender. Findings confirm the hypothesis of selective migration flows with clear-cut differences in choosing locations according to individual characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current literature assumes that non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) reduce COVID-19 infections uniformly, that is, irrespectively of their strength. The role of economic support measures (ESM) in controlling the virus is also overlooked. Using a panel threshold model of COVID-19 cases in the US states, we identify three distinct regimes of 'low', 'medium', and 'high' severity interventions; the latter being more effective towards reducing infections growth. ESM increase the efficacy of NPIs through a behavioural channel that lowers the workplace hours supplied by individuals. Nonetheless, when containment policies are not very stringent ('low' regime) or are too draconian ('high' regime), ESM are less effective towards suppressing the pandemic. Finally, we find that the largest impact towards reducing the growth of infections comes jointly from school closures, workplace closures, cancelation of public events, and restrictions on internal movement, followed by the stay-at-home requirements, and the closure of public transport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary purpose of this study is to quantitatively evaluate whether low-carbon energy transition has achieved preliminary progress in facilitating China’s green evolution of economy following the provincial dataset. Besides, how improved energy efficiency moderates the influence of energy transition on green growth and the mediation effects are also quantitatively explored. The primary findings insist that low carbonization energy transition is positively associated with green growth, a finding detected by a series of sensitivity checks. Besides, the reciprocal actions between adjusting energy structure and raising energy productivity can effectively strengthen their roles in promoting green growth. In addition, boosting clean energy transition plays an indirect role in green growth by enhancing energy productivity while directly facilitating green growth. Following the three outcomes, this study puts forward some policy implications on enhancing governmental supervision, promoting clean energy evolution, and upgrading ecological protection technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a theoretical rationale for the simultaneous use of repression and democratic institutions by a non-democratic government, as is often observed in reality. We find that economic development has different impacts on the levels of repression and democracy, depending on whether it appears in the form of rises in income or in education: A higher income level reduces democracy, whereas more education leads to both more democracy and more repression. These theoretical implications are corroborated by dynamic panel data regressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We experimentally study a class of pie-sharing games with alternating roles from a decision-making perspective. For this, we consider a variant of a two-stage alternating-offer game which introduces an imbalance in the protagonists' bargaining powers. This game class enables us to investigate how exposure to risk and strategic ambiguity affects one's bargaining behaviour. Two structural econometric models of behaviour, a naïve and a sophisticated one, capture remarkably well the observed deviations from the game-theoretic benchmark. Our findings indicate, in particular, that a higher exposure to strategic ambiguity leads to a behaviour that is less responsive to the game's parameters and to distorted, yet consistent, beliefs about other's behaviour. We also find evidence of a backward-reasoning whereby first-stage decisions relate to the second-stage ones but which do not call for the counterfactual reasoning that characterises rationality in such settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the need of transition economies to fund the investments necessary for development partly through borrowing, this paper investigates empirically the economic consequences of the government cost of borrowing for European transition economies during the period 2003-2016. The investigation analyses the impact of sovereign borrowing costs, in turn, on interest rates on loans to businesses and households, on the growth rates of investment and consumption, and, ultimately, on general economic activity. By utilizing a panel VAR technique our results indicate that consequent upon a positive shock to the cost of sovereign borrowing, the cost of borrowing for loans to both Non-Financial Corporations (NFCs) and households increases. We find that the price transmission from government borrowing costs to the private sector is at play with respect not only to borrowing rates but also to macroeconomic activity at large. Following an increase in sovereign borrowing costs, we observe substantial negative responses in the growth rates of investment, household consumption, and GDP growth. Also, while a price of borrowing increase for NFCs is found to negatively affect investment, household consumption is unaffected by an increase in household borrowing rates. These findings have valuable policy implications for policymakers and stakeholders in transition economies. Specifically, the results suggest that efforts to reduce the cost of sovereign borrowing could have a positive impact on the economy by lowering borrowing costs for households and businesses, promoting investment and consumption, and ultimately boosting economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research background: The relationship between the economy and the environment is one of the most frequently encountered issues recently. Today the issue of environmental sustainability is one of the problems faced by countries.

We investigate the impact of European Union (EU) integration on capital flows to prospective new EU member states. Using annual data between 1992 and 2020, our results suggest that although EU integration increased net capital flows before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), it was not able to shield countries from the general decline in capital flows that occurred after the GFC. Furthermore, the results show that the impact of EU integration mainly runs through improved institutional quality. We also find considerable heterogeneity in the drivers of different types of capital flows (FDI, portfolio investments, and other capital flows) that we consider.

This paper examines the relationship between entrepreneurship and unemployment. Using Eurostat business demography data, a strongly balanced panel model pertaining to 148 European regions from 2008 to 2017 is assembled and a fixed effects regression technique is used to analyse the relationship between net business population growth and lagged unemployment. Results from the analysis show evidence of a negative relationship. However, when we stratify regions based on their economic performance, we find that this relationship is positive in higher performing regions and negative in lower performing regions, suggesting that push-factor or necessity-based entrepreneurship may be more prevalent in leading rather than lagging regions. Implications for policy are discussed. Results for the influence of industrial concentration and variety on entrepreneurship are also obtained.