Advancing higher education and its implication towards sustainable development: Moderate role of green innovation in BRI economies

A pathway to sustainable development in China: The impact of local higher education expenditure on green total factor productivity

With the global warming crisis looming, the question of how to advance green total factor productivity (GTFP) has become an important concern confronting many developing countries. Although existing studies have demonstrated that total human capital can improve GTFP, the research has neglected to consider the influence of local higher education expenditure (LHEE), and no research has examined how LHEE spatially affect GTFP. Therefore, based on spatial economics theory, this study explores the spatial autocorrelation of LHEE and GTFP in China's 30 provinces from 2004 to 2021, employing a spatial Durbin model to analyze the spillover effect and influence mechanism of LHEE on GTFP. The results reveal that LHEE and GTFP exhibit positive global spatial autocorrelation. LHEE primarily improves GTFP and its subcomponents through spillover effects. The positive spillover effects in the three regions of China are significantly higher than the direct effects, whereas the direct effects in the eastern and central regions are positive but insignificant. Furthermore, LHEE promotes GTFP by advancing green technological innovation. The findings provide valuable insights to help policymakers address sustainable development goal 4 and develop synergistic regional GTFP growth policies to establish sustainable societies worldwide.

Revisiting the relationship between natural resources and environmental quality- can ICT break the "resource curse" in the environment?

Despite the prevalence of discussions on the "resource curse", the impact of natural resources on environmental quality for better or for worse has not been clearly answered, this study aims to answer the question by introducing the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). To that end, by using the Instrumental Variable Generalized Method of Moments (IV GMM) estimator and a sample of 102 developing and emerging economies from 2006 to 2016, this paper studies the impact of ICT on the relationship between natural resources and environmental quality. Specially, the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) captures the environmental quality. The results show that natural resources have a significant negative effect on EPI, specially, EPI decreases by one unit with a 1% increase in natural resource rents. ICT significantly mitigates this adverse effect, and marginal effects analysis further confirms its positive moderate effects. The results proved to be robust by Lewbel 2SLS and Driscoll-Kraay techniques or other robust tests. It is noteworthy that the adverse effect of natural resources on EPI is greater and the mitigating effect of ICT is more pronounced in low-income countries and lower-middle income countries. Overall, these results remind resource-based countries to vigorously develop ICT, and apply intelligent exploration, digital monitoring, or other digital technologies to realize the high-efficiency use of natural resources, reducing environmental pollution and ecological damage.