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Using data from the World Values Survey, this book sheds light on the link between happiness and the social group to which one belongs. The work is based on a rigorous statistical analysis of differences in the probability of happiness and life satisfaction between the predominant social group and subordinate groups. The cases of India and South Africa receive deep attention in dedicated chapters on cast and race, with other chapters considering issues such as cultural bias, religion, patriarchy, and gender. An additional chapter offers a global perspective. On top of this, the longitudinal nature of the data facilitates an examination of how world happiness has evolved between 1994 and 2014. This book will be a valuable reference for advanced students, scholars and policymakers involved in development economics, well-being, development geography, and sociology.

In the conditions of market economy all business entities, which can be viewed as socio-economic systems (SES), must be competitive. This also applies to the regions in the country. From the regions competitiveness depends effective solving of a whole range of social problems: jobs, social welfare, crime, migration and etc., in turn country region’s competitiveness depends on how it is adjusted its economic, social and ecological development. It’s important because it could be that some of the development components are developing at other component’s expenses. For example, economic development could be at social and ecological expenses. This would prevent the creation of the necessary living conditions not only today, but also for future generations. In order to survive, an SES must be constantly developing. During this development, both quantitative and the qualitative changes of the system parameters take place. The quantitative changes are reflected by the development dynamics, which encompass the equability and the intensity; while the qualitative changes are reflected by changes in the internal structure of the development process. For a system to be able to function in the long term, the quantitative development of its components must be mutually compatible. However, the existing measurements of SES development do not take this into account. The aim of the article is to propose and approve a methodology that would allow quantitatively evaluate the sustainability of the country regions development. For this purpose the multi-criteria evaluation methods are used. Based on the proposed methodology the sustainability of the country regions economic development is identified.

This paper investigates the relationship among CO2 emissions, energy consumption, economic growth and tourism development using data for a panel of 18 Mediterranean countries over the period 1995–2010. The findings from cointegrating polynomial regression indicate that the tourism-induced environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis is confirmed for three out of nine countries for which cointegration tests suggest a long-run equilibrium relationship between the examined variables. A group of causalities have been found for the Mediterranean countries. In particular, our results demonstrate bidirectional causality between GDP and tourism development for the Northern Mediterranean countries, while for the southern and global panel we document one-way causality running from tourism development to economic growth. We also show unidirectional causality running from tourism to CO2 emissions across regions. The empirical results suggest that Mediterranean countries should place more emphasis on tourism development, sustainable tourism in particular, given the potential relationship among tourism development, GDP and CO2 emissions.

Despite a massive recent proliferation of special economic zones (SEZs), there is virtually no quantitative research on what drives their dynamism. The aim of this article is to address this gap and analyze the factors influencing SEZ performance-proxied by economic growth-in emerging countries. The article relies on two novel data sets, using nightlights data to proxy for SEZ performance, and containing a wide range of SEZ policy variables and characteristics across a large number of countries. The main results of the analysis indicate that (1) zone growth is difficult to sustain over time; (2) trying to upgrade the technological component or value added of the economy through SEZ policies is often challenging; and (3) zone size matters: larger zones have an advantage in terms of growth potential. Furthermore, country context significantly determines SEZ performance. Firms look for low-cost locations but in close proximity to large cities. Proximity to large markets as well as preexisting industrialization also increase SEZ performance. In contrast, incentives and other program-specific variables are highly context specific and not structurally correlated with SEZ performance.

Phasing out fossil fuel dependency to adopt renewable energy technologies is pertinent for both ensuring energy security and for safeguarding the well-being of the environment. However, financial constraints often restrict the developing countries, in particular, from undergoing the renewable energy transition that is necessary for easing the environmental hardships. Against this background, this study makes a novel attempt to evaluate the impacts of FDI inflows on enhancing renewable energy use and attaining environmental sustainability in Bangladesh between 1972 and 2015. Using the autoregressive distributed lags with structural break approach to estimate the short- and long-run elasticities, it is found that FDI inflows enhance the share of renewable electricity output in the total electricity output levels of the country. Besides, FDI inflows are also evidenced to directly hamper environmental quality by boosting the ecological footprints figures of Bangladesh. Hence, it can be said that FDI promotes renewable electricity generation in Bangladesh but transforms the nation into a pollution haven. However, although FDI inflows cannot directly reduce the ecological footprints, a joint ecological footprint mitigation impact of FDI inflows and renewable electricity generation is evidenced. Besides, the findings also verify the authenticity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis in Bangladesh’s context. Therefore, economic growth can be referred to as being both the cause and the panacea to the environmental problems faced by Bangladesh. These results, in a nutshell, calls for effective measures to be undertaken for attracting the relatively cleaner FDI in Bangladesh whereby the objectives of renewable energy transition and environmental sustainability can be achieved in tandem. In line with these findings, several appropriate financial globalization policies are recommended.

The observed uneven distribution of economic activity across space is influenced by variation in exogenous geographical characteristics and endogenous interactions between agents in goods and factor markets. Until the past decade, the theoretical literature on economic geography had focused on stylized settings that could not easily be taken to the data. This article reviews more recent research that has developed quantitative models of economic geography. These models are rich enough to speak to first-order features of the data, such as many heterogeneous locations and gravity equation relationships for trade and commuting. At the same time, these models are sufficiently tractable to undertake realistic counterfactual exercises to study the effect of changes in amenities, productivity, and public policy interventions such as transport infrastructure investments. We provide an extensive taxonomy of the different building blocks of these quantitative spatial models and discuss their main properties and quantification.

This study investigates the impact of financial development, economic growth, and foreign direct investment on enhancing industrial growth for a panel of selected Sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries from 1990—2017. However, the present study enriches our understanding of financial development by employing a new comprehensive index focused on the accessibility, scope, and productivity of capital systems and banking institutions and incorporated foreign direct investment and economic growth as significant industrial growth drivers in the selected countries. A more robust technique Augmented Mean Group (AMG) and Common Correlated Effect Mean Group (CCEMG), were employed to access the long-run relationship among the understudy variables. Further empirical results shows that financial development and economic growth enhance industrial development with finance exhibiting signifcance while foreign direct investment is seen as adverse. Moreover, a two-way causality was obtained between industrialization and financial development while both foreign direct investment and economic growth had a one-way causality relationship with industrialization. Thus, our study implies that the government officials within these countries must provide a suitable environment for the public, private partnerships, i.e. private sector, which is the backbone for industrial development.

This paper examines the relationship among ecological footprint (EF), electricity consumption, and GDP in China using annual data ranging from 1960 to 2019. However, factors like trade openness, urbanization, and life expectancy might increase EF as ecological distortions are mainly human-induced. This study explores the effect of these variables on the environment, which is captured by EF. Quantile Regression estimates indicate that electricity consumption and real GDP increase environmental degradation, while trade and urbanization reduce EF, allowing for a higher environmental quality. On the other hand, the spectral Granger-causality tests reveal that only urbanization and life expectancy affect environmental degradation over the whole frequency domain. In the current geopolitical scenario, relevant policy implications may be derived.

This study investigates the role of institutions in shaping international differences in economic complexity—a novel measure of productive capabilities. More specifically, economic complexity corresponds to an enhanced capacity to produce and export a diverse range of sophisticated (high-productivity) products. This paper hypothesizes that there exists a positive association between institutional quality and economic complexity. The underlying intuition is that well-functioning institutions fundamentally drive structural transformation towards productive activities via strengthening incentives for innovative entrepreneurship, fostering human capital accumulation, and deploying human resources in acquiring productive capabilities. Employing data for up to 115 countries, I consistently obtain precise estimates of the positive effect of institutional quality, measured by the Economic Freedom of the World Index, on economic complexity. The main findings advocate for establishing a pro-development institutional environment, which helps attenuating the persistence of underdevelopment by fostering economic complexity.

We quantitatively analyze the role of financial frictions and resource misallocation in explaining development dynamics. Our model economy with financial frictions converges to the new steady state slowly after a reform triggers efficient reallocation of resources; the transition speed is half that of the conventional neoclassical model. Furthermore, in the model economy, investment rates and total factor productivity are initially low and increase over time. We present data from the so-called miracle economies on the evolution of macro aggregates, factor reallocation, and establishment size distribution that support the aggregate and micro-level implications of our theory.