Foreign Direct Investments and Environmental Quality in Sub-Sahara Africa: The Merits of Policy and Institutions for Environmental Sustainability

Environmental concerns in today’s world cannot be overemphasised. These concerns have interested policymakers and researchers to delve into the causes in order to help mitigate environmental deterioration and support policies and institutions for environmental sustainability. This study, therefore, investigates the association between foreign direct investment (FDI) and environmental quality, taking into account policies and institutions for environmental sustainability across 23 Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) countries. Employing the generalised method of moment (system-GMM) for the analysis, the results revealed, among others things, that FDI improves environmental quality in the long run, whereas in the short run, FDI diminishes environmental quality when interacted with policies and institutions for environmental sustainability. Furthermore, policies and institutions for environmental sustainability and domestic investment improve environmental quality in SSA in both the long and short run. The study, thus, concludes that policies and institutions for environmental sustainability in SSA are important as they improve environmental quality as well as complement FDI to improve environmental quality in the long run. The study further establishes that domestic investment is important to improve environmental quality in SSA. The study recommends policies for improving environmental quality to policymakers and stakeholders in SSA.

Molecular Extended Thermodynamics of Rarefied Polyatomic Gases with a New Hierarchy of Moments

The aim of this paper is to construct the molecular extended thermodynamics for classical rarefied polyatomic gases with a new hierarchy, which is absent in the previous procedures of moment equations. The new hierarchy is deduced recently from the classical limit of the relativistic theory of moments associated with the Boltzmann–Chernikov equation. The field equations for 15 moments of the distribution function, in which the internal degrees of freedom of a molecule are taken into account, are closed with the maximum entropy principle. It is shown that the theory contains, as a principal subsystem, the previously polyatomic 14 fields theory, and in the monatomic limit, in which the dynamical pressure vanishes, the differential system converges, instead of to the Grad 13-moment system, to the Kremer 14-moment system.