Recent studies regarding the impacts of technology spillover and international trade have gained momentum in the emerging economies. Empirical evidences show that some countries gain and other loss to grasp the opportunities of international trade and technological innovation to compete in the global market. This paper examines the effect of export and technology on the economic performance of emerging Asian countries, using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) model between the periods 2000-2016. Following the Solow economic growth model, the result identifies a positive and significant effect of export and technology on the economic growth of the emerging Asian economies. Similarly, the long-run estimation ascertains the significant and positive impacts of trade and technology on the economic growth of the countries. The results are robust using alternative dynamic panel models, representing the pivotal role of export and technology to the economic growth of the countries. Thus, we recommend policymakers to device attractive policies that can enhance the advancement of technology and trade to maintain sustained economic growth. This would also fasten the internationalisation process and enable to compete efficiently in the global markets in terms of quality of exports and standardisation.

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This paper examines the long-run and short-run relationship between Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows, exports, and economic growth in Sri Lanka over 1980-2016. The study implies Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to reveal the relationship between the variables. The study indicates that FDI inflows have a positive and significant relationship with economic growth in the long-run and short run. If FDI inflows increase, GDP growth will increase. But for exports, it has a negative and significant relationship with economic growth in the long-run. If exports increase, the GDP growth will decrease. Sri Lankan exports strongly depend on primary goods. There is a risk of finite resources and price volatility. It's not surprising for developing economy like Sri Lanka. Also, in the short run, exports have a positive and significant relationship with economic growth. If exports increase, GDP growth will increase significantly. The findings suggest that both FDI inflows and exports influence economic progress in Sri Lanka. Based on emerging market economies, FDI inflows are useful in improving the production process in the host country, and hereafter it will contribute to quality exports and the economic growth of Sri Lanka. Policymakers should emphasize to gear up all the barriers for the economic development of Sri Lanka.

Our pioneer study is aimed at investigating the role of the service sector in affecting sustainable environment in Pakistan. Using time series data over 1971–2014 and applying an autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) model with structural break analysis, we establish a long-term equilibrium relationship of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions with energy consumption, income level, services and trade openness. Our findings support a service-induced environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in Pakistan. The income level sharply raises environmental degradation at the early stage; however, after reaching a certain threshold, it improves environmental quality but at a lower rate. There exists an inverted U-shaped nexus between services and CO2 emissions, which implies that the service sector is less energy-intensive in terms of mitigating pollution in Pakistan. Moreover, the energy consumption has an inverted U-shaped effect on carbon emissions, which implies energy efficiencies and adoption of renewable energy has reduced pollution in the long run. The trade openness increases CO2 emissions in both the short term and long term. The quadratic term of income level has a negatively inelastic impact on CO2 emissions, which implies a very slow rate of improvement in environmental quality. On the other hand, the quadratic term of services shows a highly elastic impact on pollution, which induces the EKC hypothesis. Our robustness checks such as fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), dynamic ordinary least squares (OLS), and Toda and Yamamoto (TY) causality tests further confirm the existence of the service-induced EKC hypothesis in Pakistan. Moreover, there exists a unidirectional causality from energy consumption to CO2 emissions, a bidirectional causal relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions, and a unidirectional causal linkage between services and CO2 emissions. Lastly, we discuss certain policy implications for designing appropriate environmental and energy policies to mitigate the pollution in Pakistan.

The rapid urbanization growth has not only improved the living standards of people but also raised concerns for environmental sustainability over the globe. In this regard, the issue of excessive urban concentration or overagglomeration in metropolitan areas is nowadays the prime concern for urban planning and building energyefficient and eco-friendly infrastructures. In response to rising interest in the dynamic linkage between urban concentration and environment, the current research empirically examines the crucial nexus between urban agglomerations and environmental degradation in top ten urban agglomerated countries in the world from 1960Q1 to 2014Q4. The current research is the pioneer empirical work in the area of urbanization by applying recently developed and innovative methods of quantile-on-quantile (QQ) approach and quantile Granger causality in relatively less explored area of urban agglomeration at the cross-country level. Our mainstream findings indicate that urban agglomeration has a strong positive effect on CO 2 emissions in most of our sample countries, and this effect is more pronounced in higher quantiles of respective variables. These results imply that excessive levels of urban concentration in big cities cause environmental degradation, which could be attributed to extreme population density, overcrowding, traffic congestion and extensive demand for energy consumption. However, some countries such as Israel, Paraguay and Columbia exhibit overall declining and negative trends about the relationship between urban agglomerations and CO 2 emissions. Moreover, quantile Granger causality results confirm the previous findings of QQ regression and verify the existence of bidirectional causal nexus between urban agglomerations and CO 2 emissions in the majority of the lower, middle and upper quantiles in our selected top ten countries except for Kuwait. However, the unidirectional causal relationship also exists for several countries for extreme lower, middle and extremely higher quantiles. Our findings extend the previous work on agglomeration-environment nexus by determining the asymmetric magnitude of linkage between these two variables demanding cautious and individual-focused policies for urban planning and environmental sustainability.