No abstract

The world has been waging a fight against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) since December 2019. The current coronavirus crisis is a catastrophe affecting billions of families worldwide. So far, COVID-19 has wreaked havoc across the globe: by slowing down economic growth; decreasing global trade; hurting health sector; increasing unemployment and underemployment; reducing FDI and hurting the tourism sector. This study investigates the economic costs of COVID-19. By using descriptive analysis, this study shows that the major economic variables, such as economic growth, global trade, health sector, unemployment and underemployment, foreign direct investment and travel and tourism sector have significantly affected by COVID-19.

No abstract

Environmental degradation is causing global warming, which is of the utmost concern to both physical and social scientists. A number of potential determinants of environmental degradation are analysed in the literature. This study examines the role of government expenditure and financial development in environmental degradation in the context of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for the Venezuelan economy. Time series data have been analysed for this purpose. The long-term relationship between the variables in this study is established through a bounds test in the presence of an unknown structural break. The results of this study confirm the EKC hypothesis. It is found that energy use is harming the quality of the environment not only in the long run but also in the short run. This study finds a positive impact of government expenditure on environmental degradation, which indicates that the Venezuelan government is not taking its expenditure for a sustainable environment into account. Moreover, this study finds that financial development is hindering environmental degradation. This means that financial institutions in Venezuela can help to develop the concept of sustainable energy in the country and the Venezuelan government can reduce carbon emissions through financial development.

This study evaluates the impact of terrorism on economic performance in Islamic States of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) from the year 2004 to 2013. Study applied the economics of crime monitoring model by Ruiz Estrada and Ndoma (J Policy Model 36:867-882, 2014) for analysis.The application of the model for ISIS has five phases (a) the total terrorism frequency rate (b) (b) the national terrorism vulnerability rate (l T ) (c) the terrorism devastation magnitude rate (k) (d) the economic desgrowth rate (d) (e) the terrorism vulnerability surface. The results of study conclude that terrorism has badly affected the economic performance of ISIS during the study period. Instead of direct fighting against the terrorist group in ISIS, the developed world especially the Europe and United States of America may review the terrorism policy about these economies and may eradicates the terrorism by reducing poverty, religious discrimination and inequality to increase the opportunity cost of terrorism.

A prominent enhancement in health expenditure is a severe apprehension for the whole world because of the increasing cost of health. Consideration of various aspects that are playing role in the increase of health expenditure need to be considered. Health is one of the significant parts of the world, therefore, improvement in health status has become the main objective of the nations and a top leading goal of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The main goal of the present study is to investigate the worldwide, and income-based categorized countries (developed, developing, and transitional countries) macroeconomic determinants of health expenditure. The aim is to estimate the health expenditures, and its impact on demographic, economic, and environmental determinants. For the empirical analysis, the data was retrieved from the World Bank, covering the time span 2000-2016 for developed, developing, and transitional countries. The results of the study concluded that macroeconomic variables significantly affect health expenditures. Moreover, personal remittances have a dual effect on health expenditure, i.e. a positive impact on transitional economies, while a negative impact on developing economies. In the same way, CO2 emission has a negative impact on worldwide, developed countries.

Sustainable development is the ultimate objective of the nations around the world, and the adoption of development strategies is the driving force for obtaining long-run economic growth, environmental protection and social inclusion. On other hand, globalization integrates the countries around the globe economically, politically and socially. Thus, it is vital to conduct a study on the impact of globalization on sustainable development in Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, as most of the countries are in a transition state from socialism to capitalism and are opening their doors to the world. Globalization comprises three main components, which are economic, political and social. Henceforth, this study investigates the effect of economic globalization, political globalization and social globalization on sustainable development. Energy has been highlighted in the literature and received attention from researchers as a factor of income and environmental quality; thus, it is added as a control variable in this study. The long-run relationships among variables are established through panel cointegration once the order of integration is determined. This study finds a positive and significant effect of economic globalization and political globalization on sustainable development, whereas energy consumption is deteriorating in CIS countries. Policy implications are recommended.

No abstract