The members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have made several attempts to adopt renewable energy targets given the economic, energy-related, environmental challenges faced by the governments, policy makers, and stakeholders. However, previous studies have focused limited attention on the role of renewable energy when testing the dynamic link between CO2 emissions, energy consumption and renewable energy consumption. As such, this study is conducted to test a common hypothesis regarding a long-run environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). The paper also investigates the causal link between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, energy consumption, renewable energy, population growth, and economic growth for countries in the region. Using various time-series econometrics approaches, our analysis covers five ASEAN members (including Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand) for the 1971–2014 period where required data are available. Our results reveal no long-run relationship among the variables of interest in the Philippines and Thailand, but a relationship does exist in Indonesia, Myanmar, and Malaysia. The EKC hypothesis is observed in Myanmar but not in Indonesia and Malaysia. Also, Granger causality among these important variables varies considerably across the selected countries. No Granger causality among carbon emissions, energy consumption, and renewable energy consumption is reported in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Indonesia experiences a unidirectional causal effect from economic growth to renewable energy consumption in both short and long run and from economic growth to CO2 emissions and energy consumption. Interestingly, only Myanmar has a unidirectional effect from GDP growth, energy consumption, and population to the adoption of renewable energy. Policy implications have emerged based on the findings achieved from this study for each country in the ASEAN region.

The relationship between education and work is of the greatest concern to individuals and society because they are the key drivers of growth and development. In the context of Industry 4.0, labor and educators are facing the challenges of big changes in the workplace. How to prepare undergraduate students for the world of employment has become the most important mission of higher education providers. This paper explored the competency gap in the labor market in Vietnam from the perspective of employees who have been dissatisfied with the current status. First, a qualitative method with the Delphi technique was applied to confirm this consensus in an employees' competency model. Then, the satisfaction level for each competency criterion was explored by applying the advance quantitative method, namely, best non-fuzzy performance approach. Lifelong learning was ranked first, followed by creativity and innovation, foreign languages, expertise and digitalization, adaptability, and finally, organizing and managing ability. Critical thinking and problem-solving were perceived to have the biggest gap. The order of competency satisfaction is useful in explaining the mismatch between education quality and labor market demand. The findings provide valuable guidelines for education managers who seek to bridge the competency gap and improve education quality.

Background This study revisits the energy-growth-environment nexus in the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) by examining the role of trade openness, financial development, and urbanization. The cross-sectional augmented distributed lag (CS-ARDL) approach is employed to address the presence of slope homoskedasticity and cross-sectional dependence in the data set. Results Our empirical findings fail to confirm the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) during the period researched. CO2 emissions have bidirectional causality with income, the share of renewable energy, and the share of nonrenewable energy. Trade openness, financial development, and urbanization play different roles in the energy-growth-environment nexus. Whereas trade openness increases CO2 emissions, financial development reduces consumption of renewable energy. Urbanization plays a limited role in this nexus. Conclusions These findings lead to some policy implications. The close relationship between economic growth, CO2 emissions, and energy consumption is highlighted, which suggests that a policy targeting one component needs to consider the impacts on the other components.