Impact of marine heatwaves for sea turtle nest temperatures

There are major concerns about the ecological impact of extreme weather events. In the oceans, marine heatwaves (MHWs) are an increasing threat causing, for example, recent devastation to coral reefs around the world. We show that these impacts extend to adjacent terrestrial systems and could negatively affect the breeding of endangered species. We demonstrate that during an MHW that resulted in major coral bleaching and mortality in a large, remote marine protected area, anomalously warm temperatures also occurred on sea turtle nesting beaches. Granger causality testing showed that variations in sea surface temperature strongly influenced sand temperatures on beaches. We estimate that the warm conditions on both coral reefs and sandy beaches during the MHW were unprecedented in the last 70 years. Model predictions suggest that the most extreme female-biased hatchling sex ratio and the lowest hatchling survival in nests in the last 70 years both occurred during the heatwave. Our work shows that predicted increases in the frequency and intensity of MHWs will likely have growing impacts on sea turtle nesting beaches as well as other terrestrial coastal environments.

Multi-Horizon Financial and Housing Wealth Effects across the U.S. States

We investigate for the presence of multi-horizon wealth effects across U.S. states over the period of 1975:Q2 to 2012:Q2 by utilizing multi-horizon non-causality testing and multi-horizon causality measurement. At the state/aggregate level, we document that housing wealth has more statistically significant and persistent impact on private consumption than financial wealth. We also find that state-level housing/financial wealth effects are present at long time horizons and exhibit heterogeneity across the U.S. From a policy perspective, we suggest that state-level policies may specifically utilize the housing market to support consumption and growth.

Government spending and economic growth: a trivariate causality testing

PurposeThis paper investigates whether institutional environment influences the relationship government spending and economic growth in ECOWAS over the period 2008–2017.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts the recently developed panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) by Abrigo and Love (2015) and a two-step system generalised method of moment (GMM).FindingsThe results from the study show no evidence of either unidirectional or bidirectional causal relationship between government spending and economic growth in ECOWAS. Our findings reveal that government spending when associated with high level of corruption, oversized government and a waste of public resources will not cause economic growth.Originality/valueUnlike previous studies, we resolve the inherent problems of endogeneity and persistence in economic data. Likewise, we depart from existing studies that examined the causal relationship in a bivariate framework and adopt a trivariate causality testing.

Examining Causal Linkages for Sustainable Development

This chapter aims to summarize the literature comprising several variables crucial for sustainable development and the examination of causal linkages existing among these variables. This chapter explores the existing literature related to the causality-testing techniques used by several researchers and academicians in the field of sustainable development. This study sums up with a wide variety of existing causality-testing techniques in the literature (both conventional and latest/improved ones). Still, researchers are making efforts for further studies and strive to continually look for examining these causal linkages in a better way. Although several variables have been used in previous studies to explore the causality relationships for sustainable development, it seems there is no limit to the number of such explanatory variables. Therefore, causality testing for sustainable development has a broader scope always for further research advancements in this area.

The military expenditures and economic growth nexus: Panel bootstrap granger causality evidence from NATO countries

The purpose of this study is to examine the causal linkage between military expenditures and economic growth in 27 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries. Different periods are studied due to the unavailability of data for the common period for all countries. Both the symmetric and the asymmetric causality between military expenditures and economic growth are investigated under cross-sectional dependence and panel heterogeneity by using the bootstrap panel Granger causality testing approach. The results indicate that there is both symmetric and asymmetric Granger- causality between military expenditures and economic growth, which vary from one country to another. The robust empirical findings support the military expenditures and economic growth nexus in 12 of the 27 NATO member countries. Moreover, the findings show that more empirical evidence between military expenditures and economic growth can be obtained when the asymmetric causality is considered, in addition to the symmetric causality.