Repercussions the Covid-19 Pandemic on the SDGs Achievement: Is it a New Era for the Development?

Using monthly data, this article examines the influence of Covid-19 on poverty, inequality, well-being, and environmental quality for a sample of 14 African economies from 2018 to 2020. To do so, we employ a GMM approach to look at the influence of the pandemic on achieving the SDGs in Africa. According to our empirical findings, the pandemic significantly impacts poverty and pollution levels. The results show also that the pandemic coefficient considerably influences the inequality proxy. Due to social exclusion and inequities, these economies must embrace an integrated socio-economic vision to overcome the multi-faceted pandemic externalities and build more resilient economies..

Cet article analyse l'effet de la COVID-19 sur la pauvreté, l'inégalité, le bien-être, et la qualité de l'environnement pour un échantillon de 14 économies Africaines pendant la période 2018­2020, à l'aide de données mensuelles. On utilise la méthode des moments généralisés (en anglais, « generalised method of moments¼, GMM) afin d'analyser l'effet de la pandémie sur la réalisation des Objectifs de Développement Durable (en anglais, « Sustainable Development Goals¼, SDG) en Afrique. Selon nos résultats empiriques, la pandémie a entraîné une répercussion significative sur la pauvreté et les niveaux de pollution. Les résultats montrent aussi que le coefficient pandémique influence significativement l'indice d'inégalité. À cause des exclusions sociales et des iniquités, ces économies doivent adopter une vision socio-économique intégré, afin de surmonter les externalités multiformes de la pandémie, et pour construire des économies plus résilients.

The Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on Islamic and conventional financial markets: International empirical evidence.

The current global COVID-19 pandemic is adversely affecting financial markets, including commodities, conventional stocks, and Islamic stocks. This paper empirically investigates the extent to which COVID-19 effects may drive interdependence in markets. We fit copulas to pairs of returns before and during the ongoing epidemic shock, analyze the observed changes in the dependence structure, and discuss asymmetries on the propagation of crisis. We also use the findings to construct portfolios possessing desirable expected behavior. We find that the dependence structure changes significantly during the global pandemic providing valuable information on how the COVID-19 crisis affects inter-dependencies. The selected portfolio, including gold and Islamic return indices, has the best performance outside the COVID-19 crisis, and slightly more performing during the bear markets validating gold's intrinsic characteristic to be a safe haven. However, the portfolio performances, when combining the Brent with Islamic or conventional indices, have the same trend for the whole period. Our findings contribute to help investors better adjust their investment strategies.

Exploring the nexus between tourism development and environmental quality: Role of Renewable energy consumption and Income.

Tourism appears as a catalyst for growth and development; however, recent studies have documented that this sector heavily depends on energy sector and as a consequence, entire tourism industry has been blamed for CO2 emissions. This study aims to investigate the impact of tourism develop, renewable energy and real GDP on CO2 emissions for G20 economies during the period of 1995-2015. In the presence of panel unit root, Pedroni and Kao methods confirm long-run cointegration among variables. FMOLS results show that a 1% increase in tourism development decreases pollution emissions by 0.05% in long run. The results show that the increase in renewable energy consumption reduces pollution emissions. A 1% increases in renewable energy reduces pollution emissions by 0.15% in long run. There was an inverted U-shaped relation between pollution and real GDP in long run confirming the validity of environmental Kuznets curve. Paper concludes that tourism development can be driving force for CO2 emissions reduction.

The unprecedented reaction of equity and commodity markets to COVID-19.

Using a drifting spillover index approach (Diebold and Yilmaz, 2012) and a continuous time-frequency tool (Torrence and Webster, 1999), this paper attempts an empirical investigation of the spillovers and co-movements among commodity and stock prices in the major oil-producing and consuming countries. While our results point to the existence of a significant interdependence among the markets considered, Chinese and Saudi Arabian stock markets seem to be weakly integrated into the world market. Moreover, the spillovers are time-varying and reached their highest levels during the COVID-19 medical shock.

Does renewable energy modulate the negative effect of environmental issues on the socio-economic welfare?

The new sustainable development goals (SDGs) call for actions to close the gap between the protection of the environment and the socio-economic development. To shed light on the link among economy, society, and ecology, this study assesses the ability of renewable energy to moderate the effects of CO2 emissions on human development and economic growth for 31 transitional economies. Our findings substantiate that: (i) CO2 emissions have unconditional negative effects on human development and economic growth; (ii) the net impacts on human development and economic growth are positive from the interplay between renewable energy and CO2 emissions, i.e. renewable energy reduces the influences of per capita CO2 emissions on human development and economic growth; (iii) renewable energy interacts with CO2 intensity and CO2 emissions from liquid fuel consumption to negatively influence economic growth and human development. To dampen these net negative effects, corresponding renewable energy thresholds were computed and discussed. Theoretical and empirical contributions, implications to policymakers, and practitioners are also discussed.