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Volume XVI, Fall, Issue 3(73), 2021
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The theoretical analysis by Ganguli and Raju (2012) considers two Bertrand duopoly games to reassess the effect of an increase in ambient charges as a policy measure for reducing industrial non-point source pollution. In the first game, the regulator first announces the ambient charge and then two firms non-cooperatively and simultaneously choose their prices. In this game, the pollution abatement technologies are assumed to be fixed. In the second game, knowing that the ambient charge has been announced by the regulator, two firms non-cooperatively and simultaneously choose their pollution abatement technologies in the first stage and prices in the second stage. Ganguli and Raju demonstrate that in each game an increase in the ambient charge leads to more pollution. In addition, Sato (2017) examines the effect of an increase in ambient charges in a static Cournot duopoly model and shows that an increase in the ambient charge leads to less pollution as opposed to Bertrand duopoly competition.
In this paper, we examine a quantity-setting mixed triopoly model comprising a profit-maximizing firm, a partially cooperating firm and a socially concerned firm to reassess the environmental effect of an increase in ambient charges.
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This article has examined the differences in performance between the Islamic and conventional stocks and bond indices in the developed and emerging countries. The sample period is consisted of 2007 to 2018 in equity, whereas the period of debt is from 2014 to 2018. Different risk-adjusted return measurements have been applied to investigate that Islamic stock indices' performance is better than conventional indices. The results show that the Islamic equity indices have better performance than the traditional indices in financial crisis. The individual sample concludes that Islamic equity indices of Germany and the UK perform better than traditional indices, but in the USA conventional indices perform better. The performance of Shariah equity indices in all selected emerging countries is better than the traditional equity indices. This shows that Islamic indices are highly demanded throughout the world as an alternative to traditional indices.
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Trade and globalization are vital means of economic development for any country, and they have played a major part in Ghana's and the African continent's development (World Bank 2015). However, simple trade openness does not guarantee a country's human development. Even a substantially enhanced and liberalized total trade cannot guarantee economic growth, and the positive impact of trade on growth is strongly reliant on the economic structure, institutions, and other social elements of a country. Economic growth, on the other hand, is a necessary but insufficient prerequisite for human progress. Instead of producing jobs, poverty reduction, participatory, culturally protected, and eco-friendly growth, it might be unemployed, cruel, voiceless, rootless, and futureless. This type of expansion is harmful to human development (Akmal et al. 2007). The motivation for evaluating the triangulation of trade, economic growth, and human development is the contribution of trade liberalization to economic growth and the contribution of economic growth to human development, with the study focusing on the trade-human development relationship as the third side of the triangle. Furthermore, the impact of international trade on human development in Ghana will be investigated in this study.
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Despite their relevance, in-depth studies of diverse effects and factors of sludge utilization in Bulgarian agriculture are at an early stage. This paper presents results of a large-scale study aimed at determining socio-economic effects of sludge utilization in Bulgarian agriculture. First, an approach is presented to assess the multilateral effects, efficiencies and factors of sludge utilization in agriculture. Then various factors stimulating and limiting the utilization of sludge in Bulgarian farms are identified. Results of a case study of a holding using sludge as fertilizer are then presented. Based on a qualitative analysis of regulations and institutional structure, and surveys with managers and experts of urban wastewater treatment plants, and farmers using and not-using sludge, the institutional, political, organizational, personal, educational, informational, social, economic, and environmental factors influencing agricultural sludge utilization in two regions (Sofia and Burgas) are identified. Impact factors are generally divided: factors influencing the behavior of agents, and factors determining the type and extent of the effects of sludge use in agriculture. Research is to continue and deepen to establish the economic, sectoral and regional specificities on the basis of more representative information from all participants and interested parties in effective utilization of sludge in the country.
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The study analyzed the response of agricultural growth to foreign direct investment and public agricultural spending from 1980 to 2018. Data were collected from secondary sources and analyzed using Johansen Co integration, Vector Error correction model and Monte Carlo Simulation. The result showed that foreign direct investment and public agricultural spending increased agricultural production in the long but decreased it in the short run. The study concluded that an increase in foreign direct investment and an increase in public agricultural spending (scenario 3) provided the best alternative for the sustainability of agricultural growth in Nigeria. It was recommended friendly business policies should be made to attract more foreign direct investment into the country and the issues of insecurity and infrastructures should be handled for meaningful and sustainable FDI to be attracted into Nigeria.
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Since January 2014 this note and a manuscript entailing it have shown that the syntactic implication “Minimal linear time invariant state space representations if dynare” is false, with consequences on the vector autoregression representations of the states in the outputs. In 2020 the dynare team materially adopted the remedy of reducing its representations to minimal ones, as this note and the manuscript entailing it had been suggesting. The interested dynare user must still manually reduce the representation to minimality.
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In this article we estimate the determinants of broadband penetration in Europe. We use data from the European Innovation Scoreboard of the European Commission for 37 countries in the period 2010-2019. We apply Panel Data with Fixed Effects, Panel Data with Random Effects, WLS, OLS and Dynamic Panel. We found that the level of “Broadband Penetration” in Europe is positively associated to “Enterprises Providing ICT Training”, “Innovative Sales Share”, “Intellectual Assets”, “Knowledge-Intensive Service Exports”, “Turnover Share SMEs”, “Innovation Friendly Environment” and negatively associated with “Government procurement of advanced technology products”, “Sales Impact”, “Firm Investments”, “Opportunity-Driven Entrepreneurship”, “Most Cited Publications”, “Rule of Law”. In adjunct we perform a clusterization with k-Means algorithm optimized with the Silhouette Coefficient and we find the presence of three different clusters. Finally, we apply eight machine learning algorithms to predict the level of “Broadband Penetration” in Europe and we find that the Polynomial Regression algorithm is the best predictor and that the level of the variable is expected to increase of 10,4%.
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The purpose of this study is to indicate determinants of households’ subjective well-being perception. The determinants of subjective well-being include material, financial and immaterial factors, which all are elements of quality of life. An additional source of the subjective well-being perception is the differences between countries in how households assess their current life circumstances.
The empirical goal of this study is to model the influence of comparative factors on subjective well-being perception. The evidence comes from the selected European countries, namely Germany and Poland. In absolute values, numbers describing the material wealth in Germany are much higher than Polish equivalents. Surprisingly, the households’ subjective well-being perception in both countries is on an almost identical level. The research hypothesis concerning this phenomenon is that the speed in overall improvement of the households’ material well-being in wealthy countries, like Germany, is lower than in developing countries, like Poland. The pace of material situation improvement is one of the determinants of overall satisfaction, including subjective well-being perception. The analysis for selected material goods showed the influence potency of crucial impact factors describing a household. The analytical econometric tool used is the ordered multinomial logit model.
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Environmental challenges in MENA countries deserve more attention as they are pursuing economic growth and expanding urbanization and the geographical position of these countries make them more exposed to the outcomes of climate change.
In this context, this paper focuses on the proposed solutions for the climate change problem that are renewable energies and the use of fossil fuel effectively in the context of growing urbanization in the MENA region. Indeed, using the GMM estimator for 18 MENA countries during the period 2000-2018, we try to quantify the magnitude of the impact of population, economic prosperity, urbanization, fossil fuels, energy efficiency, and renewable energies, especially solar, wind, and hydropower energies on CO2 emissions. Results allow the environmental Kuznets curve validation and highlight the contribution of energy efficiency in improving the environment. However, the used proportion of renewables in the energy mix does not significantly affect environmental quality. Moreover, solar energy contributes to emissions reduction. While the adopted level of wind and hydropower energy does not allow these countries to improve their environment.
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Azerbaijan’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been under discussion since the late 1990s, however this process is not any closer to being achieved today. Despite the government’s multiple economic reforms and the implementation of strategic roadmaps, the same cannot be said about Azerbaijan’s commitment to bilateral and multilateral market access negotiations (WTO 2017).
The objective of this article is to investigate the potential impact of WTO accession on the economic strategy of Azerbaijan. Contrary to other WTO members, China does not automatically apply the Most-Favored Nation (MFN) tariff rate to non-members. The cost-benefit analysis in this paper suggests that the Azerbaijani goods with the highest untapped potential in China suffer from the application of the General Tariff Rate (GTR) versus the MFN tariff applied to all WTO members (China Customs 2021, International Trade Center 2021). Findings suggest that Azerbaijan’s WTO accession is required for this country to integrate into the Middle Corridor and reap its benefits fully.
