Effect of Deficit Financing on Economic Growth in Bangladesh: Cointegration and VECM Approach

Bangladesh has been encountering a budget deficit since 1972 because of a decrease in the source of income. This paper aims to examine the effect of budget deficit financing on economic growth in Bangladesh throughout 1981–2018. Using secondary data, the paper uses the cointegration test, vector error correction mechanism (VECM) and Granger causality test. Johansen’s cointegration test outcomes find that the study variables are cointegrated and subsequently have a long-run nexus among the variables. The study finds that in the long run, government domestic debt (GDD), government external debt (GEXD) and money supply (MS) affect positively economic growth (RGDP). The outcomes of the VECM approach express that in the short run, GDD, external debt and MS negatively affect economic growth. Also, short-run causality runs from the GDD, GEXD and MS to economic growth. The Granger causality test result shows unidirectional causal nexus running from GDD to RGDP, RGDP to external debt and GEXD to MS, and bidirectional causal nexus between MS and GDD in Bangladesh. The study suggests the governments should enhance moderate levels of domestic and external borrowing and uses it in productive and efficient ways to accelerate economic growth in Bangladesh.

Response-abilities of care in more-than-human worlds

This article rethinks the doctrines of responsibility and protection in international environmental law in light of notions of response-abilities and care in more-than-human worlds. Inspired by the intersecting strands of new materialist, relational and posthuman literatures, and informed by critiques of them by decolonial, indigenous and black scholars, the analysis works with onto-epistemologies of becoming that posit an inseparability of being, knowing and acting with(in) the Anthropocene/s. Through the notion of response-abilities of care, the article reconfigures how the destructive and the restorative relations between humans and nonhumans could be construed beyond a narrow understanding of state sovereignty, territorial jurisdiction, liberal human-centred notions of individuated agency and the strict causal nexus between victim and perpetrator. The analysis concludes by reflecting on how law could remain open to emergent, unfolding and contingent potentialities of entangled human-nonhuman relations, and questions law’s capacity to recognize and respond to the agency and alterity of nonhumans. These configurations exceed the schema of responsibility and protection that organizes even international environmental law’s most progressive theories and practices, such as granting ‘rights to nature’.

A Dynamic Multivariate Causality Analysis of Energy–Growth Nexus Using ARDL Approach: A Malaysian Energy Policy Perspective

This study analyzes a dynamic long-run and short-run causal nexus between energy consumption and economic growth in the presence of capital, labor, and urbanization over the period 1971–2014, in Malaysia. The stationarity issue was tested using augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF), Kwiatkowski–Phillips–Schmidt–Shin (KPSS), and Ng–Perron tests. However, a dynamic long-run co-integration relation between variables was checked through the ARDL technique. An unrestricted vector error correction model (MUVECM) was used to estimate the short-run and long-run dynamic relations between the parameters and the Engle–Granger method was used for causality analysis. Results of statistical analysis confirmed that all variables were found to be I (1) except variable labour was I(0) and none of the variables was I(2). Total energy consumption Granger caused GDP in one direction over the period 1992-2010 in the case of Croatia. However, labor and urbanization impacts were mixed. The Granger causality analysis confirmed mixed results in the short run and the long run. Moreover, estimated results confirmed a feedback hypothesis between income and capital was in the short term and the long run. The short-run and long-run causal effects of labor force on economic growth were confirmed. This study provides important insights to policymakers and energy economists. Prudent energy conservation policies and economically improved measures would be of great help. However, demand-side management-based policies would have no adverse effect on the economic performance of Malaysia.

The Causal Nexus Between Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Growth in Indonesia: An Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds Testing Approach

The nexus between foreign direct investment and economic growth has long been among the most debated issues in macroeconomics. Some studies find a positive link between the two factors, but others find no evidence. This current research fills the gap by analysing the causal nexus between foreign direct investment and economic growth in Indonesia for the period 1970-2018. Indonesia as a developing country is one of the largest recipients of FDI flow; hence the study on the impact of FDI on the economic growth is very much important. This current research employs a contemporary time-series procedure, involving several unit-root tests namely Augmented-Dickey-Fuller (ADF), Phillips-Perron (PP), Kwiatkowski-Phillips-Schmidt-Shin (KPSS), and Lee-Strazicich (LS), an Auto-Regressive-Distributed-Lag (ARDL) bounds-testing method for cointegration, and Granger causality test. The findings provide evidence of long-run and short-run causal direction from GDP to FDI. In contrast, FDI generates only a short-run relationship on GDP. The Granger causality test confirms the finding in ARDL that there is a unidirectional causality running from GDP to FDI.

Crime After Conflict

Overwhelming statistical evidence shows a correlation between conflict and crime rates, both at a structural and individual level. This is assumed by many to mean that conflict is responsible for rises in crime. This article describes an alternative approach: that conflict is conducive to organised criminality, but does not necessarily cause it. By demonstrating examples from post-conflict societies, it is shown that the causal nexus of conflict and crime is actually security, development and governance. This effect is particularly pronounced where violent crime is concerned, but the inconsistent and often contextual nature of such crime renders any attempt to draw conclusions difficult. By framing peacebuilding efforts around conflict, and prioritising the neoliberal democratic model of the Global North as a cure to security and development shortcomings, crime is actually further enabled as the symptoms of criminality are not addressed. By returning the focus to security, development and governance, critical discussion may be able to cut through the noise and provide practical solutions to the crime epidemics characteristic of post-conflict environments.

A Cross-Sectoral Investigation of the Energy–Environment–Economy Causal Nexus in Pakistan: Policy Suggestions for Improved Energy Management

This paper explored the energy–environment–economy (EEE) causal nexus of Pakistan, thereby reporting the causal determinants of the EEE nexus by employing the newly developed modified Peter and Clark (PC) algorithm. The modified PC algorithm was employed to investigate the causal ordering of energy consumption, CO2 emissions and economic growth across Pakistan’s domestic, industrial, transportation and agricultural sectors. An empirical comparison, i.e., following Monte Carlo simulation experiments demonstrates that the proposed modified PC algorithm is superior to the original PC proposition and can differentiate between true and spurious nexus causalities. Our results show that significant causality is running from energy consumption in industrial and agricultural sectors towards economic growth. There is no causal association between energy consumption and economic growth in the domestic and transportation sectors. On the other hand, causality runs from energy consumption in the transportation, domestic and industrial sectors towards CO2 emissions. It is concluded that energy consumption in industrial and agricultural sectors leads to economic growth alongside the associated CO2 emissions. On the other hand, the contribution of domestic and transportation sectors in economic growth is trivial with significant CO2 emissions. This paper provides novel empirical evidence of impacts of energy mismanagement at sectoral levels, economic output and environmental consequences; alongside policy recommendations for sustainable energy-based development on the national scale.

Local causation

The counterfactual and regularity theories are universal accounts of causation. I argue that these should be generalized to produce local accounts of causation. A hallmark of universal accounts of causation is the assumption that apparent variation in causation between locations must be explained by differences in background causal conditions, by features of the causal-nexus or causing-complex. The local account of causation presented here rejects this assumption, allowing for genuine variation in causation to be explained by differences in location. I argue that local accounts of causation are plausible, and have pragmatic, empirical and theoretical advantages over universal accounts. I then report on the use of presheaves as models of local causation. The use of presheaves as models of local variation has precedents in algebraic geometry, category theory and physics; they are here used as models of local causal variation. The paper presents this idea as stemming from an approach using presheaves as models of local truth. Finally, I argue that a proper balance between universal and local causation can be assuaged by moving from presheaves to fully-fledged sheaf models.

Analysis of the two-way causal nexus between macroeconomic factors and infrastructure development: the experience of selected African countries

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to analyze the two-way causal nexus between macroeconomic factors such as foreign aid, industrialization, economic growth, population growth, urbanization, control of corruption and the infrastructure development index of the top-ranking African countries from 2003 to 2018.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts various econometric tools such as cross-sectional dependence test, panel unit root and cointegration test and Dumitrescu and Hurlin panel Granger causality test in ascertaining the relevant relationships between the variables under consideration.FindingsThe main findings of the Granger causality test result revealed a bidirectional causal relationship between foreign aid and infrastructure and between urbanization and infrastructure. The study also found unidirectional causality running from population growth to infrastructure while a zero causal relationship existed between industrialization and infrastructure, economic growth and infrastructure and lastly, between control of corruption and infrastructure. The study concludes that the major macroeconomic factors that influence infrastructure development in these selected African countries are foreign aid, population explosion and urbanization. Also, their high infrastructure development index has causal influence in only attracting more foreign aid and also promoting urban expansion.Originality/valueTo the best of the author's knowledge, the study is unique as it is the first to determine the two-way causal nexus between macroeconomic factors and infrastructure development using a sample of the top ten African countries in infrastructure ranking. The findings reflect the current situation in Africa.