N55 - Economic History: Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment, and Extractive Industries: Asia including Middle EastReturn

This study investigates the asymmetric effects of political stability and corruption on ecological footprint using time series data from 1984 to 2021 for Pakistan. The paper uses the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) method to get accurate results regarding the positive and negative shocks of political stability. Besides, the NARDL method is utilized to identify the cointegrating link between the parameters, with a particular focus on uncovering asymmetric consequences in the long term. In addition, this research also includes natural resources, urbanization and economic progress in the model. The study results show that (i) political instability in Pakistan reduces environmental quality in both shocks; (ii) control of corruption increases the air quality in the negative shock; (iii) natural resources and urban population positively affect environmental quality; and (iv) economic progress has a favourable effect on environmental worsening. Additionally, the findings of the NARDL estimates and the outcomes of the robustness check are consistent. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the general policy recommendation highlights the need for policymakers to vigorously synchronize their efforts to contend with the severe environmental degradation and political risk in Pakistan.

This research investigates the effect of political stability and geopolitical risk on environmental sustainability (ES) by considering R&D investments in nuclear and renewable energy. Con- sidering the high political stability and recent energy crisis and increasing geopolitical risk, the study focuses on three leading European countries. We use the load capacity factor, include data between 1985/1 and 2020/12, and apply quantile on quantile regression (QQ), Granger causality in quantiles (GQ), and quantile regression (QR) models. The study finds that in higher quantiles (i) increasing political stability stimulates the ES in Sweden and the United Kingdom; (ii) increasing geopolitical risk supports the ES in France; (iii) R&D investments increase the ES in all the countries; (iv) there are generally causal effects from the explanatory variables to the ES except some quantiles (0.45-0.50) in all the countries; (v) the power effects of the variables differ according to countries, quantiles and variables.