Does the digital finance revolution validate the Environmental Kuznets Curve? Empirical findings from China

In recent years, digital finance has become a crucial part of the financial system and reshaped the mode of green finance in China. Digital finance has brought certain impact on economic growth, industrial structure, and resident income, which may affect pollution. The nexus of digital finance and environment in China is thus worth exploring. By revising the traditional Environmental Kuznets Curve model with income inequality variable, this paper decomposes the environmental effects of economic activities into income growth effect, industrial structure effect and income inequality effect, and use panel data of China’s provinces to conduct an empirical analysis. The results reveal the following: (1) the Environmental Kuznets Curve is still valid in sample, and digital finance can reduce air and water pollution (as measured through SO2 and COD emission) directly; (2) in the influence mechanism, digital finance can alleviate income inequality and promote green industrial structure, thus reducing pollution indirectly, but the scale effect of income growth outweighs the technological effect, which increases pollution indirectly; and (3) digital finance has a threshold effect on improving the environment, then an acceleration effect appears after a certain threshold value. From the regional perspective, digital finance development in eastern regions is generally ahead of central and western regions, and the effects of environmental improvement in the eastern regions are greater. According to the study, this paper suggest that digital finance can be an effective way to promote social sustainability by alleviating income inequality and environmental sustainability by reducing pollution.

Whether the Agricultural Insurance Policy Achieves Green Income Growth—Evidence from the Implementation of China’s Total Cost Insurance Pilot Program

With the rise and popularization of the concept of green sustainable development, green income growth of agricultural insurance policies has attracted wide attention. Whether green income growth can be achieved has become an important criterion for measuring an agricultural insurance policy. In this context, this paper attempts to test whether the agricultural insurance policy achieves green income growth. Based on the panel data of 31 provinces (the research sample of this paper selects 31 provincial-level units (province for short) in China, including 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions and 4 municipalities directly under the central government. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Macau Special Administrative Region and Taiwan Province are not included in the research sample) from 2009 to 2020 in China, this paper empirically evaluates the triple-effect of total cost insurance pilot program (TCI) on farmers’ income, environment and public health by employing a difference-in-difference model (DID). The results show that TCI increases farmers’ income, but deteriorates the environment and residents’ health without achieving green income growth. In the analysis of heterogeneity, compared with central and western regions, farmers’ income is more likely to increase in the eastern regions. However, environmental pollution is more severe, and residents’ health deteriorates more, in eastern regions. In addition, the positive effect of TCI on farmers’ income and the deterioration of residents’ health is more obvious in areas with a higher degree of damage, while the negative effect of TCI on the environment is more obvious in areas with a lower degree of damage. Furthermore, the mechanism analysis shows that TCI not only promotes the increase in farmers’ income through insurance density, but also affects the environment and residents’ health through straw burning. Therefore, the government should raise the subsidy standard for farmers to use straw-processing equipment and also to implement differentiated subsidies in regions with different levels of economic development and areas with different degrees of damage.

Music and Musical Heritage as Factors for Rural Development

This chapter reflects on the understanding and measurement of development and rural development and on how music can influence it. Now more than ever, sustainability must direct development, and life quality indicators must be taken into consideration rather than income, growth, etc. From fieldwork, deep knowledge of different European contexts and a thorough state-of-the-art research, the chapter analyses cases and projects that have had relevant impact in their territories or may be considered for different reasons good practice cases. The aim of the chapter is to analyze those factors that may be considered to evaluate the quality and impact of a case. Researching, safeguarding, and recreating musical heritage produce impacts that go far beyond the economic aspects. Some of these aspects will be highlighted in this chapter. Results and conclusions will serve therefor to advance in research lines related to music tourism, musical heritage, and rural development, but will also be useful for managers, rural agents, local governments.

SOCIAL INSURANCE AND FEATURES TAXATION OF FARMS

There are farms (individual and family) an important component agricultural sector of Ukraine’s economy and effective 224 mechanism that promotes increasing employment and income growth in rural areas, involvement investment resources in agricultural production [1]. Domestic farmers, despite certain economic problems, provide more efficient use of agricultural resources, as it is fully implemented here economic interest the producers themselves, who are mainly owners of these resources, or on lease terms use some of them. In recent years, there has been a negative downward trend in Ukraine number of farms. The main reason for this situation is domestic agrarian experts call the lack of potential farmers start-up capital, on the basis which it would be possible to build an efficiently functioning agricultural production.

Pathways toward Inclusive Income Growth: A Comparative Decomposition of National Growth Profiles

Despite rising interest in income inequality, scholars remain divided over the mechanisms underlying inclusive income growth and how these mechanisms vary across countries. This study introduces the concept of national growth profiles, that is, the additive contribution of changes in taxes, transfers, composition, and other factors including market institutions to changes across a country’s income distribution. We present a decomposition framework to measure national growth profiles for eight high-income countries from the 1980s to 2010s. Our findings adjudicate competing sociological and economic perspectives on rising inequality. First, we find that policy-driven changes in taxes and transfers are the dominant drivers of inclusive growth at the tails of the income distributions. Second, rising educational attainment contributes most to income growth across the distribution, but consistently contributes to less-inclusive growth. When changes in education are considered, changes in assortative mating and single parenthood have little consequence for changes in inequality. Third, changes to other factors including market institutions increased inequality in countries such as the United States, but less so in France and Germany. Had the United States matched the changes to Dutch tax policy, Danish transfer policy, or other factors of most other countries, it could have achieved more inclusive income growth than observed.

Economic freedom improves income mobility: evidence from Canadian provinces, 1982–2018

Economic freedom is robustly associated with income growth, but does this association extend to the poorest in a society? In this paper, we employ Canada's longitudinal cohorts of income mobility between 1982 and 2018 to answer this question. We find that economic freedom, as measured by the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of North America (EFNA) index, is positively associated with multiple measures of income mobility for people in the lowest income deciles, including (a) absolute income gain; (b) the percentage of people with rising income; and (c) average decile mobility. For the overall population, economic freedom has weaker effects.

Prediction of Farmers’ Income in Hebei Province Based on the Fractional Grey Model (1,1)

The problem of increasing farmers’ income has been a hot issue of social concern. Understanding the farmers’ income and the overall development trend is conducive to the rational layout of the social economy and promotes the steady development of a well-off society. Based on this, the paper selects the per capita disposable income (PCDI) of farmers’ households from 2012 to 2019 in 11 cities of Hebei Province as the research object and applies the fractional grey model (FGM (1,1)) to predict farmers’ income from 2020 to 2024. The results show that the farmers’ income will increase in the next five years. However, the growth rate of farmers’ income is slow in the areas with a large base of farmers’ income and strong in the areas with a small base of farmers’ income. The area with the highest trend in the growth rate of farmers’ income is Zhangjiakou and the lowest place is Handan. Only Shijiazhuang’s income growth rate is on the rise. Finally, suggestions are given to promote farmers’ income in Hebei Province.

Renewable energy consumption, nonrenewable energy consumption, CO2 emissions and economic growth in Vietnam

PurposeThis study intended to analyze the impact of nonrenewable energy consumption, renewable energy consumption, CO2 emissions on per capita income growth in Vietnam in the period 1990–2019.Design/methodology/approachThe present study adopts the technique of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) cointegration for the annual data collection of Vietnam.FindingsThe results of the study show that in the long term, nonrenewable energy consumption increases per capita income, but CO2 emissions reduce per capita income. In the short run, changes in nonrenewable energy consumption and renewable energy consumption promote per capita income growth in Vietnam. However, changes in nonrenewable energy consumption in the past have had a negative impact on the current income growth of Vietnamese people.Originality/valueThe current study provides new insights into the growth effect of nonrenewable energy consumption, renewable energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The papers suggests important implications to Vietnam in setting the long-run policies to boost the effect of energy consumption and CO2 emissions on growth in Vietnam in the coming time.

Three decades of agricultural and rural transformation in Indonesia

Structural transformation in Indonesia has been a subject of broad empirical research. However, a minimal study has verified the characteristics of rural transformation. This paper aims to analyze indicators of rural transformation, likely drivers, and their impact on household income and poverty incidence. The analysis utilizes national data covering the period of 1990-2019. The data is analyzed using graphical illustrations and a simple regression analysis. As part of rural transformation, the result shows that there have been changes in the share of agriculture value from staple food to high-value commodities, particularly during the first two decades. This transformation is also complemented by the increase in rural non-farm employment, most notably during the last decade. The results also highlight stages and the likely drivers to those changes, including institution, policies, and investment (IPIs). Finally, this phenomenon leads to rural household income growth and a reduction in rural poverty. The finding of this research implies that to increase rural household income and reduce rural poverty rate, the government should focus not only on increasing agricultural productivity but also on promoting rural non-farm employment.