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This paper investigates the effect of the COVID-19 and oil prices on the US partisan conflict. Using daily data on world COVID-19 and oil prices, monthly data on the US Partisan Conflict index, and the MIDAS method, the finding suggests that both COVID-19 and oil prices mitigate US political polarization. The finding implies that political leaders aim low for partisan gains during stressful times.

This paper presents an efficiency assessment of selected OECD countries using a Slacks Based Model with undesirable or bad outputs (SBM-Undesirable). In this research, SBM-Undesirable is used first in a two-stage approach to assess the relative efficiency of OECD countries using the most frequent indicators adopted by the literature on energy efficiency. Besides, in the second stage, GLMM-MCMC methods are combined with SBMUndesirable results as part of an attempt to produce a model for energy performance with effective predictive ability. The results reveal different impacts of contextual variables, such as economic blocks and capital-labor ratio, on energy efficiency levels. IntroductionThis paper analyzes the energy efficiency of selected OECD countries using SBM- The paper is structured as follows: The nest Section presents the contextual setting, including a description of the energy sector across the OECD countries under investigation.The literature survey is then presented in Section 3, followed by the SBM-Undesirable methodology Section. Section 5 presents the data and the prediction of efficiency levels using MCMC generalized linear mixed models, followed by the discussion of the results and the conclusion. Contextual SettingEnergy is one of the major inputs in many production and related processes. Energy is needed in the industrial sector, transportation, street lighting, residential, commercial and government buildings, among others. The demand for energy is rising due to a rising population and the quest for economic growth, which has consequently led to rising energy Due to increasing globalisation and international competitiveness, more emphasis is being placed on reducing production costs, including those related to energy. Moreover, in addition to energy security issues, an increasing cause of concern over the increasing The reason is that energy efficiency is considered as one of the vital strategies to addressing the challenges posed by increasing energy demand (Ang, 2006;Zhou and Ang, 2008). Improving energy efficiency is important from various policy perspectives.Conservation of energy derived from fossil fuels in order to prevent their depletion in the 5 near future is a very crucial objective (Mukherjee, 2008a). Moreover, energy security can be enhanced by improving energy efficiency. Furthermore, reduction in energy use, especially coming from burning fossil fuels, is important for preventing a further deterioration of environmental quality, through increasing CO 2 emissions (Balachandra et al., 2010). Energy efficiency also plays a vital role in achieving the underlying economic objective of cost minimization. For cost effectiveness, it is very important to reduce energy use during periods of high energy prices and also to suitably substitute other inputs for energy (Mukherjee, 2008a). Energy efficiency makes available additional energy resources, which can help in addressing the issues of energy inadequacy or insecurity as well as equity concerns (Balachandra, et al. 2010). Ac...

This article investigates the impact of sectoral production allocation, energy usage patterns and trade openness on pollutant emissions in a panel consisting of high-, medium-and low-income countries. Extended STIRPAT (Stochastic Impact by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology) and EKC (Environmental Kuznets Curve) models are conducted to systematically identify these factors driving CO2 emissions in these countries during the period 1980-2010. To this end, the study employs three different heterogeneous, dynamic mean group-type linear panel models and one nonlinear panel data estimation procedure that allows for cross-sectional dependence. While affluence, nonrenewable energy consumption and energy intensity variables are found to drive pollutant emissions in linear models, population is also found to be a significant driver in the nonlinear model. Both service sector and agricultural value-added levels play a significant role in reducing pollution levels, whereas industrialisation increases pollution levels. Although the linear model fails to track any significant impact of trade openness, the nonlinear model finds trade liberalisation to significantly affect emission reduction levels. All of these results suggest that economic development, and especially industrialisation strategies and environmental policies, need to be coordinated to play a greater role in emission reduction due to trade liberalisation.

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This article contributes to the discussion on the dynamic nexus of renewable energy consumption and unemployment by incorporating nonlinear cointegration and causality analysis. Using a sample of 80 countries spanning the period 1990-2013 and the advanced generation of unit root, cointegration and nonlinear Granger causality methodological approaches in panel data, we obtain mixed results about the impact of renewable energy consumption on unemployment. Although the total findings document a positive impact of renewable energy consumption on unemployment, disaggregated data across specific regions, such as Asia and Latin America, highlight the favourable effect on unemployment, implying that the effect of renewable energy consumption on jobs creation depends on the cost of adopting renewable energy technologies and energy efficiencies that seem to vary across the regions under investigation.