The Impact of Corruption, Economic Freedom and Urbanization on Economic Development: Western Balkans versus EU-27

Do Smart Cities Represent the Key to Urban Resilience? Rethinking Urban Resilience

The pandemic disrupted all activities, so it became necessary to understand, but also rethink, the complexity of economic resilience to better deal with future shocks. A component that can signal the resilience potential of a socio-economic system is smart city response, using technology to make services more efficient. This paper aims to analyze the relationship between smart cities and urban resilience to determine whether urban resilience is significantly influenced by urban smartness. Given the EU SDGs Strategy and the Implementation of RRF Programs, we have also identified the main driving forces that can amplify the impact of smart city development policies on local resilience. The results highlighted that at the European level, smart cities are significantly correlated with urban resilience; urban resilience is explained by the variation in urban smartness; resilience is correlated with all smart city dimensions, highly in (post-)pandemic, redefining a "new normal" in resilience approaches for smart cities. We also stressed the emerging, more complex content of the economic resilience concept and the new structural approach of smart cities resilience for the post-COVID-19 period.

Corruption as a Moderator in the Relationship between E-Government and Inward Foreign Direct Investment

E-government initiatives help a country to publicize information with greater transparency and efficiency and are expected to reduce corruption in the country. The present study investigates the impact of a host country’s e-government system on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) which plays an important role in the sustainable growth of countries. Using a logistic regression method to model whether the inward FDI is positive or negative, this study provides empirical evidence on the effects of the e-government development level on inward FDI. In addition, the authors point out that the positive influence of e-government on FDI becomes greater when the target country is more corrupted, and they hypothesize that the impact of e-government is moderated by corruption. The estimation results show that the e-government effect becomes greater when the host country is more corrupted. The findings have practical implications for policymakers for sustainable development of their economies on how they can attract more FDI by controlling the market environment.

Evaluating the nexus between ongoing and increasing urbanization and carbon emission: a study of ARDL-bound testing approach

The growing urbanization has created a substantial economic imbalance between the urban and rural households in the world's emerging economies and put a significant effect on carbon dioxide emissions. Simultaneously, many researchers have grown concerned by the significant consequences of urbanization on carbon emissions. In current research, we make an effort in Pakistan to investigate how urbanization affects the carbon emissions. In order to attain the intended goals of long run and short run investigation, we employed the most appropriate method of auto-regressive distributed lag model for time series data-set, while the vector error correction model, on the other hand, was employed to investigate causation. The estimated findings of the auto-regressive distributed lag model supported the association amongst the model's selected variables. In long and short run, the estimated findings approved that as the level of urbanization rises, so does the carbon emissions. Furthermore, the estimated results of the vector error correction model acknowledged the validity of short run unidirectional causal relationship from urbanization towards carbon emissions and from carbon emission towards energy consumption, as well as in short run, where economic growth one-way Granger generates the carbon emission. To summarize, based on the current findings, that reflects the significance of the underlined factors. The study recommends that government should prioritize the development of energy efficient and environment friendly strategies with respect to fast growing urbanization to control the carbon emission.

Does Chinese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Stimulate Economic Growth in Pakistan? An Application of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL Bounds) Testing Approach

The objective of this paper is to ascertain the impact of Chinese FDI on economic growth in Pakistan. This study documents the exploration of the determinants of economic growth in Pakistan by emphasizing the significant role played by Chinese FDI and investments in renewable energy in particular. This paper employs time series data analysis to examine the relationship between GDP and Chinese FDI, inflation, trade openness, exchange rates, interest rates, remittances, and renewable energy consumption from 1990 to 2019. The study involved performing the ARDL bounds test, and it was determined that the dependent and independent variables are linked in the long term. Furthermore, the error correction model is negative and noteworthy, which checks the long-run relationship between variables. According to the findings of the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, Chinese FDI has a substantial favorable effect on Pakistan’s economic growth. Furthermore, renewable energy usage has a long-term favorable and significant association with Pakistan’s economic growth. This study established that FDI, and particularly renewable energy, will stimulate the economic growth of Pakistan. Our research has substantial policy implications, especially when it comes to the relationship between FDI and renewable energy.

Are International Indices Good Predictors of Economic Growth? Panel Data and Cluster Analysis for European Union Countries

Every year, news about the publication of rankings and scores of important international indexes are highlighted, with some of the most prestigious being the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), the Human Development Index (HDI), the Ease of Doing Business (EDB), the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and the Global Entrepreneurship (GEI). A country’s progression in these indices is associated with economic growth, especially since several empirical studies have found evidence to reinforce these beliefs, the indices having been built based on the scientific literature on economic growth. Building a database on these indices for European Union countries between 2007 and 2017 and using panel data methodologies and then 2SLS (Two-Stage Least Squares) to solve the problem of endogeneity, we verify empirically through panel data estimates, what is the relationship between the mentioned indices and the European Union countries’ economic growth for the period. However, as the European Union is made up of diverse countries with different economic and social realities, we divided the countries into six clusters and made an individual interpretation for each one. We found that human development and competitiveness play an important role in economic growth, and entrepreneurship also impacts this growth. Regarding income distribution, applying the Gini index, we found that only human development mitigates inequalities.