The asymmetric effects of institutional quality on financial inclusion in the Asia-pacific region.

Financial inclusions are generally considered an effective mechanism to support sustainable economic growth in emerging markets. While the symmetric effects of institutional quality on financial inclusion have been widely investigated, their asymmetric effects have largely been ignored in existing literature, particularly for emerging markets. In this paper, we estimate the index of financial inclusion for 19 countries in the Asia-Pacific region from 2004 to 2020. The institutional quality is proxied by five indicators, including (i) business sophistication, (ii) regulatory quality, (iii) investment freedom, (iv) government effectiveness, and (v) the rule of law. The advanced panel smooth transition technique ensures that the asymmetric effects of institutional quality on financial inclusion are substantiated depending on the income level across countries in the sample. We find that institutional quality's effects on financial inclusion are asymmetric depending on the income level. Our findings indicate that middle-income countries such as Vietnam and other emerging nations in the Asia-Pacific region mostly benefit from the positive effects of institutional reform to ensure more inclusive economic growth in the future.

The convergence of financial inclusion across provinces in Vietnam: A novel approach.

Financial inclusion has generally been considered an effective mechanism to support economic growth and reduce Vietnam's poverty for the last decade. While the importance of financial inclusion to economic growth or macroeconomic stability has been widely examined, it appears that the degree of financial inclusion across Vietnam has not attracted attention from academics and policymakers. In particular, a convergence of financial inclusion across provinces in Vietnam has never been examined. This paper is conducted to examine the static and dynamic distributions of financial inclusion across provinces in Vietnam. The latest three biennial surveys from 2014 to 2018 and a novel approach known as the dynamic kernel density function are used in this study. Our results indicate that Vietnam's economic growth and development over the 2014-2018 period is relatively inclusive. The evidence also demonstrates that households provided with access to multiple sources of finance depend significantly on the provincial level of income. We also find that provinces located in the national key economic regions, including (i) the Northern region and (ii) the Southern region, appear to achieve a higher degree of financial inclusiveness. Our findings also confirm the catching-up from the financially disadvantaged provinces to financially advantaged provinces locating within the key economic regions. We argue that understanding the asymmetric effect of economic growth on financial inclusion will be helpful for the Vietnamese government in formulating and implementing economic policies promptly to secure the sustainable and inclusive goals of economic growth and development in the future.

Does the Kuznets curve apply for financial development and environmental degradation in the Asia-Pacific region?

The Asia-Pacific region has faced conflicting objectives of achieving sustainable economic growth and simultaneously improving environmental quality. This paper, the first of its kind, applies the concept of the Kuznets curve to financial development in this region. The long-term effect of financial development on environmental degradation is examined using a sample of 26 countries in the 2007-2017 period. This paper uses the long-term estimation techniques - the panel autoregressive distributed lag, including the pooled mean group model; the mean group; and the dynamic fixed effect estimator. The second-generation Granger test is used to determine the causality between financial development and environmental degradation. The U-shaped nexus and a bi-directional relationship between financial development and environmental degradation are found.