Education is one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations and is also a vital factor for nearly all the other SDGs. Therefore, factors underlying educational attainment are crucial for achieving the SDGs by 2030. In this context, the financial system has become critical in building various schools and covering educational expenditures such as teachers’ salaries, teaching materials, and training. This paper uses static and dynamic regression methods to study the impact of financial sector development, remittances, real GDP per capita, information and communications technologies (ICT) development, and globalization on educational attainment in 18 emerging economies over the 2000–2020 period. The results indicate that financial development, remittances, real GDP per capita, ICT development, and globalization positively impact educational attainment. Real GDP per capita, ICT development, globalization, and financial development have the highest impact of these factors. In contrast, remittances have a limited positive influence on educational attainment compared with other variables.

Environmental degradation is one of the most significant problems of the globalized world. This paper explores the impact of institutional development and human capital on CO2 emissions in 11 EU transition economies over the period of 2000–2018 through co-integration analysis. The co-integration analysis revealed that human capital negatively affected CO2 emissions in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovenia, and that institutions had a negative impact on CO2 emissions in the Czech Republic. However, both institutions and human capital positively affected CO2 emissions in Latvia and Lithuania.

Environmental sustainability is one of three pillars of sustainability. However, a significant worldwide deterioration in the environment has been experienced since the Industrial Revolution, but the efforts to protect the environment date back to the 1970s. In this context, many economic and non-economic factors underlying environmental degradation have been investigated until today, but the influence of economic freedom indicators and education on the environment have been relatively less analyzed and the researchers have mainly focused on the influence of economic and institutional variables on the environment. Therefore, this paper investigates the reciprocal interplay among economic freedom indicators, education, and environment in EU member states over the 2000–2018 term by using a causality test with cross-sectional dependency and heterogeneity and taking the research gap into consideration. The causality analysis indicates that market-oriented economic structure and education can be beneficial in combatting environmental degradation.