Saeed Moshiri; Arian Daneshmand; Bahar Niazi
Abstract
The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) suggests that environmental quality improves with income after the economy passes an income threshold. Many studies have examined the EKC but the results are mixed. This study Investigates how international trade has affected the EKC’s position. The study ...
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The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) suggests that environmental quality improves with income after the economy passes an income threshold. Many studies have examined the EKC but the results are mixed. This study Investigates how international trade has affected the EKC’s position. The study uses the ecological footprint, as an indicator of environmental degradation, in 149 countries divided into four income groups for the period 1980-2014. From the panel model estimations, the results confirm an inverted U-shape relationship between the ecological footprint and income. Furthermore, they indicate that trade has altered the position of the EKC, in the entire sample. However, the results vary across income groups. Specifically, the EKC has been shifted by trade upwards in upper-income boundaries. The lower-income countries have not reached the income threshold suggested by the EKC and trade impact on the position of the EKC has not been significant. In this case, it can be inferred that trade worsens environmental degradation.
Arian Daneshmand; Mohammad Sattarifar
Abstract
The role of information and communications technology (ICT) in promoting productivity growth has been the focus of much debate in the past few decades. To our knowledge, there is no prior study done on the Iranian economy that particularly has looked at the effect of internet use on labor productivity. ...
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The role of information and communications technology (ICT) in promoting productivity growth has been the focus of much debate in the past few decades. To our knowledge, there is no prior study done on the Iranian economy that particularly has looked at the effect of internet use on labor productivity. In this paper we explore short-run and long-run effects of internet use on labor productivity over the period 1989–2015 in Iran. We use autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach (Pesaran et al. 2001) within an augmented Solow (1956) growth model to examine contribution of internet use on labor productivity growth. We find that internet use has a positive long-run impact on labor productivity. Furthermore, the Toda and Yamamoto (1995) non-Granger causality test shows a bi-directional causal relationship between internet use and labor productivity.
