The International Energy Agency revealed in its report in 2021 that the world energy-CO2 emission reached its highest peak during that year. This statistic shows the need to set new environmental protection policies and improve the current ones. Hence, our study aims to highlight the leading role of human capital in the fight against climate change. To do so, by using the Feasible Generalized Least Squares and the Two-Stage Least Squares estimators, we analyze the moderating impact of human capital on the link between renewable energy, nonrenewable energy, economic growth, and CO2 emissions in the case of the 20 newly emerging market economies for the period 1990–2021. We find negative effects of renewable energy consumption, industrialization and trade openness on CO2 emissions. We also find positive effects of nonrenewable energy consumption, economic growth, and human capital on CO2 emissions. In addition, our findings reveal that renewable energy consumption and human capital are complementary levers for reducing CO2 emissions, whereas human capital mitigates the detrimental effect of nonrenewable energy consumption on environmental quality. Besides, the results underline that human capital has an inverted U-shaped effect on CO2 emissions. Regarding policy implications, policymakers should emphasize the complementarity between human capital and renewable energy consumption by facilitating the accumulation of human capital towards productive investments and the use of renewable energy technologies in these countries. They should also raise people’s environmental awareness by implementing educational reforms, effective environmental awareness campaigns, and government regulatory pressures that help people understand global warming issues and adopt environmentally friendly practices in their daily activities. Finally, policymakers should promote the use of renewable energy rather than non-renewable energy sources in the production of goods and services by obliging countries to integrate green policies into their industrialization and trade openness strategies.

Balanced and sustainable development is one of the main objectives of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Therefore, considering the role of urbanization and human capital as critical elements for sustainable economic development, we analyze the moderating effect of human capital on the relationship between urbanization and CO2 emissions in Asian member countries of the Belt and Road Initiative. Using the STIRPAT framework and Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis, we also analyze human capital's linear and nonlinear effects on CO2 emissions in multivariate models, including urbanization, gross domestic product per capita, energy use, and foreign direct investment. We employ the pooled OLS robust standard errors estimator Driscoll-Kraay, the Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS), and the two-stage least square (2SLS) estimators in the case of 30 BRI countries for the period 1980–2019. The results show positive effects of energy and urbanization on CO2 emissions. Moreover, this study reveals that human capital annihilates the positive impact of urbanization on CO2 emissions. We also find that human capital has an inverted U-shaped effect on CO2 emissions. Accordingly, we provide policy implications on the conditional influence of human capital in the urbanization-CO2 emissions nexus for sustainable development in these countries. JEL code: C21, Q01, Q56

Balanced and sustainable development is one of the main objectives of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Therefore, considering the role of urbanization and human capital as critical elements for sustainable economic development, we analyze the moderating effect of human capital on the relationship between urbanization and CO2 emissions in Asian member countries of the Belt and Road Initiative. Using the STIRPAT framework and Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis, we also analyze human capital's linear and nonlinear effects on CO2 emissions in multivariate models, including urbanization, gross domestic product per capita, energy use, and foreign direct investment. We employ the pooled OLS robust standard errors estimator Driscoll-Kraay, the Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS), and the two-stage least square (2SLS) estimators in the case of 30 BRI countries for the period 1980-2019. The results show positive effects of energy and urbanization on CO2 emissions. Moreover, this study reveals that human capital annihilates the positive impact of urbanization on CO2 emissions. We also nd that human capital has an inverted U-shaped effect on CO2 emissions. Accordingly, we provide policy implications on the conditional in uence of human capital in the urbanization-CO2 emissions nexus for sustainable development in these countries.

Public spending is a part of the fiscal policy and one of the government’s main tools to implement its economic policy. With government spending still on the rise in many economies, and the different economic growth levels, especially in low and middle economies, the debate on whether government spending has a positive, negative or neutral impact on economic growth is still raging nowadays. So, in this analysis, we attempt to contribute to this issue by shedding light on this relationship in the case of low, middle, and high-income countries. In so doing, we extend the previous work of Devarajan et al. (1996) and Chu et al. (2020) by considering the nonlinear relationship between disaggregated public spending and economic growth. We also pay attention to the role of public spending on environmental protection, political stability, control of corruption, and the 2008 financial crisis, on economic growth. To reach our objectives, we examine 13 high-income countries and 22 low to middle-income countries for the period 1993–2018 through four estimations techniques: the fixed-effects approach; the pooled standard errors Driscoll-Kraay (1998), the panel feasible generalized least squares, and the difference GMM with orthogonal deviations.