Search Results (1,348)

This paper examines how shifts in sustainable capital markets influence societal well-being through the lens of a “Jazz Economy”, highlighting improvisation and adaptability in financial systems while grounding the analysis in empirical modelling. A panel of EUROSTAT indicators for 27 EU member states (2019–2022) was analyzed, including green bond issuance, market capitalization, environmental taxation, social spending, life expectancy, and subjective life satisfaction. Hierarchical clustering grouped these indicators into coherent patterns of “financial swings”, which were then linked to a composite quality-of-life index through an Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), with results benchmarked against linear regression and random forests. The inclusion of time lags between fiscal, financial, and social indicators strengthens the causal interpretation of the results, moving beyond simple correlations. Findings show that higher public environmental protection spending combined with a strong net international investment position consistently predicts greater life satisfaction, whereas income and longevity alone do not guarantee improvements in subjective well-being, reflecting nonlinear interactions among fiscal, financial, and social variables. Robustness checks, including the exclusion of pandemic years, confirm the stability of outcomes. The study concludes that cohesive fiscal–financial strategies, integrating environmental policy and macro-financial resilience, are essential for enhancing quality of life and that sustainable finance can deliver tangible social benefits beyond metaphorical framing. Full article

Improving green total factor productivity (GTFP) is critical for balancing economic benefits and ecological constraints. While most existing studies emphasize the pivotal role of governments in GTFP enhancement, they predominantly treat governments as homogeneous entities, overlooking the fundamental premise of local government attention allocation. Analyzing 2010–2020 data from 285 Chinese cities, this study reveals that increased local government green attention significantly stimulates GTFP through three channels: fostering green technology collaboration among firms, deepening green involvement of public research institutions, and elevating green innovation quality. Heterogeneity analyses demonstrate amplified effects in cities characterized by intense intergovernmental competition, stringent intellectual property protection, robust fiscal capacity, and advanced technological infrastructure, but attenuated impacts in resource-dependent regions with heavy reliance on extractive industries. Full article

Global efforts to achieve carbon neutrality increasingly rely on institutional green policy that reshape corporate environmental behavior. This study examines whether green policy improves corporate environmental performance (EP). Using panel data of the A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2022, we exploit the rollout of pilot cities as a quasi-natural experiment and apply a difference-in-differences (DID) framework, supplemented by double machine learning (DML) and robustness tests. The results show that the New Energy Demonstration City (NEDC) policy notably increases EP, with stronger effects for state-owned enterprises, large firms, and regulated industries. Mechanism analysis indicates that artificial intelligence innovation capacity and the stringency of regional environmental regulation amplify the policy’s effectiveness, revealing a “innovation–regulation” dual mechanism. By focusing on integrated EP rather than single outcomes, this paper extends the literature on green policy instruments. It demonstrates that structural policies combining fiscal incentives and regulatory constraints can correct market failures and foster long-term green transition. Beyond China, the findings provide insights for other developing economies where market-based instruments alone may be insufficient to trigger low-carbon transformation. Full article

The rapid accumulation of public debt raises global concern over its implications for financial markets. This study examines the effect of domestic public debt on financial development in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, a region marked by sharp heterogeneity in institutions, debt dynamics, and oil dependence, using annual panel data for 16 countries over the period (2000–2020). Our analysis employs a fractional response model (FRM), which accounts for the bounded nature of the dependent variable, corrects for heteroskedasticity, and incorporates country fixed effects. The findings reveal a significant negative effect of domestic public debt on financial development, consistent with the lazy banks and crowding-out hypotheses. This adverse relationship persists across different income groups and debt percentiles, with modest attenuation at higher debt levels. Oil rents are also found to exert a robust negative effect, highlighting the structural vulnerabilities associated with oil dependence. These results emphasize the importance of debt management, fiscal frameworks that account for commodity cycles, and policies to reduce the sovereign–bank nexus in fostering sustainable financial development in the region. Full article

Introduction/Background: Maternal depression is a significant risk factor for infant emotion regulation (ER), often linked to detrimental mother–infant interactions. Individual effects of maternal depression and maternal sensitivity are known, but their combined influence on infant ER across different emotional contexts remains underexplored. This study investigates concurrent relations among maternal depression, maternal sensitivity, and infant ER in low- and high-arousal contexts in a matched sample of primarily White educated mothers. Methods: We examined 5-month-old infants of clinically depressed and nondepressed mothers. Maternal sensitivity was coded from home observations; infant ER behaviors (e.g., gaze aversion, object-attend, self-soothing) were assessed through observation during modified Still-Face Paradigm (SFP) and fear-eliciting tasks. Results: Clinically depressed mothers exhibited lower maternal sensitivity than nondepressed mothers. Infants of depressed mothers used adaptive ER strategies less—specifically, lower monitoring and gaze aversion in the SFP, and lower gaze aversion and object-attend in the Fear task. Maternal sensitivity moderated the association between maternal depression and infant gaze aversion during the SFP and both gaze avert and object-attend during the Fear task. There was a context-specific regulatory difference for self-soothing; only infants of depressed mothers used self-soothing significantly more during the high-arousal Fear task. Conclusions: These findings underscore the interplay between maternal clinical depression and sensitivity in affecting infant ER. Maternal sensitivity acts as a crucial buffer against the adverse effects of maternal depression on infant ER. The results also indicate that infant emotion regulation varies in different contexts of low and high arousal. Interventions that target maternal sensitivity could significantly improve emotion regulation in infants of depressed mothers. Full article

This study is intended to conduct a comprehensive review of federalism. This study starts from the institutional aspect and analyzes how federalism, as a compound structure, divides power between the central and local governments. Then, this study mentions that federalism also has its normative connotations, which are traceable to the theological concept of a covenant. We also elaborate on how the success of the United States’ federalism strengthened its institutional aspect while overshadowing the older covenant tradition. Next, this study presents a typological framework of federalism, introducing concepts such as coming-together federalism and holding-together federalism; dual federalism and cooperative federalism; decentralization and non-centralization; and asymmetrical federalism, non-territorial autonomy, and consociationalism, presidential and parliamentary federalism, as well as democratic federalism and authoritarian federalism/facade federalism. Next, this study compares monist federalism with multinational federalism. Then, this study examines the specific applications of federalism in fiscal, environmental, health-care, and social-welfare policies. By reviewing the history, theoretical origins, institutional development, and contemporary manifestations of federalism, this study provides a roadmap for scholars in the field of federal studies. Finally, this study also puts forward several testable hypotheses, aiming to provide operational research agendas for future studies. Full article

China’s dual carbon goals necessitate green transformation across industries, with STAR Market enterprises serving as crucial drivers of technological innovation. Existing studies predominantly focus on traditional sectors, overlooking dynamic policy interactions and structural heterogeneity in these technology-intensive firms. This study examines how coordinated environmental tax reforms, green finance initiatives, and equity network synergies collectively shape enterprise green transition, using multi-period difference-in-differences and triple-difference models across 2019 Q3–2023 Q4. By integrating financial records, patent filings, and carbon emission data from 487 STAR Market firms, the analysis identifies environmental cost pressures as the dominant policy driver, complemented by delayed financing incentives and accelerated resource integration through corporate networks. Regional institutional environments further modulate these effects, with areas implementing stricter tax reforms exhibiting stronger outcomes. The findings advocate for adaptive policy designs that align fiscal instruments with regional innovation capacities, optimize financial tools for technology commercialization cycles, and leverage inter-firm networks to amplify sustainability efforts. These insights contribute to refining China’s climate governance framework for emerging technology sectors. Full article

Worldwide educators have been devoting resources to quality education and achieving Sustainable Development Goals. Taiwan strategically implemented the Higher Education Sustained Progress and Rise of Universities in Taiwan (SPROUT) Project with an equity-oriented resource allocation. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of SPROUT’s implementation by analyzing 2018 to 2023 data. In this study, we construct a Fiscal Sustainability Index and other Institutional Performance Index to assess institutions. The two-way fixed effects regression model is applied to investigate the causal relationship among FSI, institutional performance, and the implemented effect of the SPROUT Project. The results of this study showed that the SPROUT Project has not fully achieved all four core objectives, and regional disparities still persisted. In other words, the elite universities in northern Taiwan still receive the most SPROUT Project funding and outperform other universities in other regions. FSI is positively associated with publicness, social responsibility, and overall institutional performance. The results of this study show how higher education institutions can achieve partial sustainable development goals of Goal 2030 via fiscal sustainability and equitable resource allocation. Taiwan’s pivot toward an equity-funding paradigm and supplement with performance-based grants has attenuated the historical concentration of resources among elite universities. Quality education should be inclusive, equitable, and accessible in education and sustainable resources. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed the global focus on the role of public health spending, particularly in developing regions where fiscal space is mostly limited. Many African countries have started reassessing the health sector as a core economic resilience component. This study examines how government health expenditure responds to macroeconomic fluctuations in African countries. Attention was given to asymmetries between positive and negative periods of GDP growth and the impact of COVID-19 on these dynamics. The analysis uses annual data from 45 African economies from 2000 to 2022 and applies a panel NARDL framework to capture nonlinear and dynamic relationships. The sample is further disaggregated into low-income and middle-income groups. The results from the full sample indicate a procyclical pattern of health spending, where expenditure rises during economic expansions, but it discloses an acyclical relationship during recessions. Further analysis reveals that health spending in low-income countries follows a similar procyclical trend, while middle-income countries exhibit a countercyclical response to positive and negative growth shocks. Inflation consistently reduces health spending across the sample. The COVID-19 period has altered the cyclical pattern of health expenditure, at least in the short-run, especially for low-income countries. These findings highlight the need for more resilient and countercyclical fiscal strategies in the health sector, specifically during economic downturns, to ensure sustained investment. Full article

This study provides a comprehensive empirical examination of the drivers and dynamics of Juglar cycles in China from 1981 to 2024. We develop a unified framework that integrates investment, institutional, productivity, and structural factors, and employ a Vector Error Correction Model to analyze the long-run equilibrium and short-run adjustment mechanisms linking fixed asset investment (FAI), government fiscal expenditure (GFE), total factor productivity (TFP), industrial structure upgrading (ISU), and gross domestic product (GDP). Our results confirm a stable cointegration relationship and identify FAI as the most influential long-run driver of output, with a 1% increase in FAI leading to a 0.88% rise in GDP. Industrial upgrading also exerts a positive long-run influence on growth, whereas government spending exhibits a significant negative effect, potentially indicating crowding-out or efficiency losses. In the short run, we find unidirectional Granger causality from FAI to GDP, suggesting that changes in investment contain meaningful predictive power for future output fluctuations. Furthermore, impulse response and variance decomposition analyses illustrate the temporal evolution of these effects, highlighting that the contribution of TFP gains importance over the medium term. Overall, this study deepens our understanding of business cycle transmission mechanisms in emerging economies and offers valuable insights for policymakers seeking to balance investment-driven growth with structural reforms for sustainable and robust economic development. Full article

River source areas often face stricter environmental protection requirements, leading to external cost and development opportunity losses. Quantifying such losses is essential for designing ecological compensation mechanisms (payment for ecological services). Existing methods often lack scientific rigor and practical feasibility. A method based on the comparison of Cumulative Growth Rates of Per Capita GDP (CGR-PCGDP) is proposed and applied to the water source area of the Middle Route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project (MR-SNWDP) in China. The method quantifies the fiscal opportunity losses by comparing the CGR-PCGDP between the water source area and a reference area, and deducting growth rate differences before the baseline year. Regions in closer proximity to the Danjiangkou Reservoir—the source point of water diversion—have been found to be more markedly affected by stricter protection policies, resulting in greater development opportunity losses. Shiyan City and Nanyang City experienced annual average fiscal opportunity losses of CNY 569 million and 371 million, respectively, whereas cities farther from the reservoir, such as Hanzhong City, Ankang City, and Shangluo City, incurred lower losses. Compared to traditional approaches, this method avoids overestimation and offers practical, evidence-based results. How factors like geographical location, economic structure, fiscal compensation, and economic transformation capacity affect losses is further discussed, and strategies for balanced development and effective ecological compensation are proposed. The study offers methodological and referential support for the establishment of ecological compensation standards in river source areas. Full article

Aligning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 11 and 13), this study examines how dynamic subsidy thresholds steer environmental resilience, social inclusion, and fiscal sustainability in China’s urban renewal. Using evolutionary game theory (EGT) and system dynamics (SD), stakeholder strategies are modeled under varying policy interventions, with key parameters calibrated through Chongqing’s LZ case and MATLAB simulations. These include government subsidies (M₁, M₂), penalties (S₂), and stakeholder benefits (R₁–R₅). The results reveal the following two distinct types of critical thresholds: a universal and robust fiscal warning line for developers (M₁ > 600 k RMB) and a threshold for residential subsidies that is moderated by psycho-social factors (M₂), with its value fluctuating within a certain range (approximately 550 k RMB to 850 k RMB). A sequential synergy pathway is proposed: “government-led facilitation → developer-driven implementation (when R₃ > 450 k RMB) → resident participation (triggered by R₂ > 150 k RMB).” The study advocates differentiated incentives and penalties, prioritizing early-stage governmental leadership to foster trust, promote inclusive participation, and align with environmental, social, and economic sustainability goals. This integrated framework reveals critical policy leverage points for enhancing social and fiscal resilience, providing a replicable model for sustainable and resilient urban governance in the Global South. Full article

The importance of policy coordination between fiscal and monetary policy authorities has become more apparent, in the face of unexpected economic shocks and persistent macroeconomic challenges. In this paper, we employ the Set-Theoretic Approach (STA) to explicitly measure the presence of coordination between fiscal and monetary policies from 1990 to 2023 in South Africa. In addition, the model measures policy shocks theoretically and structurally using a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model. The results indicate a weak level of policy coordination estimated at 24% where shocks are measured theoretically. Where shocks are measured structurally, the results still present weak policy coordination estimated at 33%. These results underscore the need for stronger policy coordination in South Africa, particularly during periods of economic strain such as the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, when conflicting fiscal and monetary stances weakened policy effectiveness. In the South African case, limited coordination contributed to procyclical fiscal tightening alongside contractionary monetary policy, which constrained growth and delayed recovery. Full article

Background: While adverse drug events (ADEs) are a major public health concern, data on the occurrence of lethal or fatal ADEs in Japan are limited. Therefore, this study aimed to elucidate the characteristics and reporting trends of lethal or fatal ADEs by analyzing the Japanese Adverse Drug Event Report (JADER), a pharmacovigilance database. Methods: Of the individual ADE reports registered in the JADER database between April 2004 and March 2024 (fiscal year (FY) 2004–2023), all data involving individuals aged ≥ 20 years with complete data on sex and age were included in this analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the results. Results: The number of ADE cases registered in the JADER database increased approximately 2.3-fold from 21,824 in FY 2004 to 50,520 in FY 2023. Lethal or fatal ADE cases increased throughout the study period. In particular, the reporting rate of fatal ADEs reported in JADER appears to have increased in recent years. Lethal or fatal ADEs were reported more frequently among men and individuals aged ≥ 70 years. The recent increase in the reported rates of lethal or fatal ADEs may be largely influenced by the increased number of ADE reports associated with antineoplastic agents. The increase in the number of reports on immune checkpoint inhibitors is particularly notable. Conclusions: This study provides new insights into demographic and drug-related characteristics, as well as time trends associated with lethal or fatal ADEs in Japan. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings. Full article

Understanding the nature of monetary and fiscal policy interactions has gained more importance over the years, especially within the context of the global financial crisis and the recent COVID-19 pandemic. This study uses a Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model and a Markov Switching Dynamic Regression (MSDR) framework to explore the dynamics of monetary–fiscal policy interactions in South Africa. The analysis employs time series data from 1994 to 2023 and tests the dynamic response of key macroeconomic variables to positive monetary and fiscal policy shocks. Furthermore, the MSDR framework is utilised to analyse how policy behaviour evolves during regime change. The TVP-VAR results show that fiscal expansions led to a positive response in GDP over time, a stable interest rate reaction post-COVID-19, and a consistently negative CPI response, contradicting conventional theory. The MSDR analysis reveals a dominant regime where monetary policy is active and fiscal policy is passive, with a positive interaction between interest rates and government spending, likely reflecting South Africa’s high debt environment. These findings underscore the importance of understanding policy interactions’ landscape to inform policy decisions better and minimise sub-optimal policy outcomes. Full article