Nonlinearity in the relationship between COVID-19 cases and carbon damages: controlling financial development, green energy, and R&D expenditures for shared prosperity

Abstract

The world faces a high alert of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), leading to a million deaths and could become infected to reach a billion numbers. A sizeable amount of scholarly work has been available on different aspects of social-economic and environmental factors. At the same time, many of these studies found the linear (direct) causation between the stated factors. In many cases, the direct relationship is not apparent. The world is unsure about the possible determining factors of the COVID-19 pandemic, which need to be known through conducting nonlinearity (indirect) relationships, which caused the pandemic crisis. The study examined the nonlinear relationship between COVID-19 cases and carbon damages, managing financial development, renewable energy consumption, and innovative capability in a cross section of 65 countries. The results show that inbound foreign direct investment first increases and later decreases because of the increasing coronavirus cases. Further, the rise and fall in the research and development expenditures and population density exhibits increasing coronavirus cases across countries. The continued economic growth initial decreases later increase by adopting standardized operating procedures to contain coronavirus disease. The inter-temporal relationship shows that green energy source and carbon damages would likely influence the coronavirus cases with a variance of 17.127% and 5.440%, respectively, over a time horizon. The policymakers should be carefully designing sustainable healthcare policies, as the cost of carbon emissions leads to severe healthcare issues, which are likely to get exposed to contagious diseases, including COVID-19. The sustainable policy instruments, including renewable fuels in industrial production, advancement in cleaner production technologies, the imposition of carbon taxes on dirty production, and environmental certifications, are a few possible remedies that achieve healthcare sustainability agenda globally.

The Dynamic Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Environment-friendly Energy Industry

“…Anser, Godil, Khan, and others tested linear causation between the pandemic and green energy consumption crossing 65 countries. With a variation of 17.127% across a time horizon, the intertemporal relationship from the study demonstrates that green energy sources would probably have an impact on the number of coronavirus cases [8].…”

Main Challenges of Incorporating Environmental Impacts in the Economic Evaluation of Health Technology Assessment: A Scoping Review

“… Challenges of incorporating environmental impact in the economic evaluation of health technology assessment [ 3 , 7 , 8 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 24 , 27 , 28 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 39 , 41 , 48 , 52 , 53 , 54 ]. The particular bibliographic references related to each approach and challenge can be found in Supplementary Material (Table S4) .…”

“…Technological innovation related to the green production process and goods and energy transformations can support the global health care sustainability agenda [ 17 ]. The concept of planetary health has been proposed as a holistic and dynamic approach to understand the interconnections between environmental changes and their effects on a local, regional, and global scale and human health to advance the intersectionality of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) [ 18 ].…”

Governance Quality, Public Health, Education, and Innovation: Study for Novel Implications

“…Omri et al ( 7 ) depicted that improving research and development helps in enhancing health outcomes (i.e., reduced mortality rates and diseases). Anser et al ( 33 ) estimated that the rise and fall of research and development expenses and other elements led to an increase in infectious disease cases across the nation-states. Further, attributable to the National Academic Press ( 34 ) that R&D confronts the transmittable disease threats is emphasized.…”