Baher Bakhtyar’s research while affiliated with The University of Sheffield and other places

The main objective of this study is to analyze the impact of disaggregated energy consumption (coal, natural gas, petrol, and electricity) on the economic growth of BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) from 1990 to 2020. The study implements the Augmented Mean Group (AMG) and Cross-Sectional Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) techniques for empirical analysis. The cointegration results indicate a consistent long-term link between coal consumption, gas, petrol, electricity, and economic growth. The CS-ARDL estimates show that disaggregated energy consumption has a positive short- and long-term effect on economic growth, and the AMG approach supports these findings. These results suggest that the economic growth of BRICS countries is positively influenced by increased consumption of different types of energy sources. The panel Granger causality test result confirms the causal link between coal consumption and economic growth, electricity and economic growth, and petroleum and economic growth, supporting the feedback hypotheses, while natural gas consumption and economic growth support the neutral hypothesis. These findings suggest that energy conservation initiatives can be implemented in BRICS countries without negatively impacting economic growth.

Universal environmental policies adopt strategies that enhance and encourage the production and usage of electric vehicles (EVs). Universal cooperation is evident in the framework of agreements or protocols so as to successfully lead countries towards the predetermined goals. The question is whether this trend can reduce global warming or CO2 emissions worldwide. By adopting game theory, this study analyses electricity carbon life cycle in leading EV countries. Results show that although the spread of EVs in Europe and the USA can mitigate carbon emissions, the production and use of electric vehicles in some countries, such as China and India, become a new source of such emissions. This reverse effect is due to the emission of greenhouse gases from electricity sources in these countries. Game theory also suggests that countries with unclean electricity sources should reconsider their plans to produce and use EVs. This study confirms that although carbon emission and global warming are global problems, regional and local policies can be substituted with a single comprehensive approach for an effective means of CO2 emission reduction. Graphical abstract

Introduction. This study aims to explore the impact of tourism along with some other regressors, namely labor force, official development assistance, local investment, and inflation rate on the economic growth rate of the developing country of Pakistan. Material and Methods. We used annual time series data over the period from 1980 to 2018 for empirical analysis. Based on the order of integration of data, we employed an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach. Results. Empirical results vindicated a positive relationship between tourism and growth. The official development assistance and inflation rate have shown significantly negative impacts on the economic growth of Pakistan, whereas domestic investment has shown an insignificantly positive impact on the economic growth. Conclusions. The empirical findings exhibit that tourism plays a key role in the process of economic growth and development of Pakistan. The study recommends that the management authorities should implement appropriate policies to attract more tourists to improve economic growth of Pakistan. Furthermore, sincere efforts are required to ensure macroeconomic stability through controlling inflation, avoiding reception of foreign aid, and encouraging global investment.

The broad purpose of this study is to empirically explore the impact of globalization and financial development on environmental pollution by carbon (CO2) emissions in the six Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries using balanced panel data from 1971 to 2015. We also aimed to test the legitimacy of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for this region. The fixed-effects approach preferred by the Hausman specification test is used to estimate the empirical model, and the feasible generalized least squares (F.G.L.S.) estimator is employed to cope with any issue of heteroscedasticity and serial correlation. This study found that globalization and financial development have adverse and significant effects on environmental degradation and affirm the legitimacy of the EKC hypothesis for these countries. The finding of this study suggests that the governments of MENA countries should design and implement appropriate policies for strengthening the renewable sources of energy like wind, solar, bio-fuel, and thermal to decrease CO2 emissions and boost sustainable economic development. The policymakers should focus on the efficiency of institutions and enhancement of energy-saving projects in this region.