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Developed countries have long tried to increase their environmental standards to mitigate the negative effects of economic activities. For this purpose, they impose environmental taxes, energy taxes, and emission limits. In the last decade, a new measurement technique for environmental policy was introduced: the Environmental Policy Stringency Index (EPS index). This index takes values from 0.00 to 6.00, and higher values refer to more stringent environmental policies, whereas lower values suggest lax policies. This study aims to explore the impact of the EPS index on economic activities at the aggregate and sectoral levels for 20 European countries covering the period 1995–2020. For this purpose, this study utilizes the dynamic panel data approach, the two‐step system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method. The empirical findings show that an increase in the EPS index causes a decline in economic growth at the aggregate level. At the sectoral level, it was found that the industry sector is negatively affected by increases in environmental standards. In addition to the system GMM results, this study employs the Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel non‐causality test to detect causal linkages between variables. The empirical findings show that the EPS index Granger causes economic activity in almost all sectors. The empirical results indicate that environmental regulations should be carefully designed to prevent economic contraction. Policymakers need to develop policies to decrease dependency on fossil fuels in industrial production. Thus, they can subsidize firms to invest in productive and innovative areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing the challenges posed by pollutants is necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target 12 or achieve sustainable production and consumption patterns. Convergence assessment of air pollution provides information which can be beneficial to how to handle that air pollution across different countries. Nitrogen oxides (NOx) are one of the most popular air pollutants. However, the current empirical literature on environmental economics largely ignores the convergence of per capita NOx. For this reason, this study investigates the stochastic convergence of aggregate and fuel-specific per capita NOx emissions in 20 OECD countries. This paper employs a recently introduced panel stationarity test that considers both smooth and sharp structural changes in the data generation process. The panel results show that the convergence hypothesis is rejected only for NOx from light-oil consumption. However, country-specific results reveal substantial evidence for divergence in the sample countries when NOx emissions per capita generated through diesel consumption, light-oil consumption, and natural gas consumption are considered. Besides, we find that most of the series have convergent behaviour for aggregate NOx, NOx from biomass consumption, NOx from hard-coal consumption, NOx from heavy-oil consumption, and NOx from the process. The policy implications of the empirical results for proper environmental management are elucidated in the paper. Actions taken based on the convergence findings will likely lead to a decrease in NOx emissions per capita as the countries will converge towards a lower level of NOx emissions per capita, in line with SDG's target 12. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a few decades, factors affecting environmental deterioration have been at the center of much interest This paper examines the impact of income level, disaggregated energy consumption, types of globalization level, and urbanization on per capita ecological footprint by utilizing novel machine learning techniques (tree regression, boosting, bagging, and random forest) for 27 OECD countries during 1971–2016. It is found that the random forest algorithms best fit the dataset. The empirical results exhibit that oil product consumption, electricity consumption, and gross domestic product are the most significant variables for our model. Besides, the partial dependence plots results show that economic growth and especially fossil fuel energy consumption damage the environment. These findings have important implications for both developed and developing countries for designing proper energy and environmental policies. Especially, policymakers should focus on sustainable development instead of plain economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this investigation, the causal link between financial development and economic activity is explored to determine whether the supply leading hypothesis (SLH) or the demandfollowing hypothesis (DFH) is valid for the Turkish economy. For this aim, the study employs the Fourier Toda-Yamamoto causality test of Nazlioglu, Gormus, and Soytas (2016) by utilizing annual data covering 1980-2020. To proxy financial development, the Financial Development Index (FDi) of IMF and its eight sub-indices are chosen. The findings of this work show that the FDi Granger causes per capita income in Turkey. Therefore, one can say that the SLH holds for the Turkish economy at the aggregate level. The disaggregated level of data differs across sub-indices. The empirical findings of the paper provide significant policy implications for the economic agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the convergence of per capita carbon and ecological footprints in G7 countries during 1961–2016. For this purpose, we propose a new unit root test in the panel setting–the panel Fourier threshold unit root test. This test takes into consideration both multiple smooth structural changes and nonlinearity. According to the literature, the power of the nonlinear unit root tests is reduced in the case of ignoring structural breaks. Therefore, we expect to get more reliable empirical findings by utilizing this methodology. The empirical results of this paper show that these series have nonlinear behaviors for the period 1961–2016. Furthermore, they demonstrate that the absolute convergence hypothesis is valid in G7 countries for both regimes. Thus, governments can conduct common environmental policies, including international climate summits and agreements, instead of national-based policies to mitigate environmental deterioration in their countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the impact of bank-specific and macroeconomic factors on deposit bank profitability in Turkey. To present the significance of these variables OLS methodology is performed to construct multiple regression analysis. Monthly data is employed for the period over 2006:1 to 2016:2. Empirical results suggested that, equity over total assets, non-performing loans to total cash loans, net interest revenues to average total assets, and central bank policy interest rate have a significant impact over return on assets while non-interest income over total assets, market share of deposit banks in banking sector, operational expenses to average total assets, and exchange rate are not statistically significant. Also, effect of recent global financial crisis on bank performance is significantly negative. Indeed, result of this study provide supportive evidence that financial crisis adversely affected banking industry performance in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]