P45 - Other Economic Systems: International Trade, Finance, Investment and AidReturn

In order to tackle climate change and global warming, policymakers all around the globe have stressed fostering investment in green initiatives and projects. Particularly in top polluted economies, the importance of green investment has recently increased manifold. Thus, researchers have focused on finding the determinants of green investment. This analysis aims to scrutinize the nexus between digital government, digital financial inclusion and green investment in top polluted economies by employing two-stage least squares (2SLS), generalized method of moments (GMM) and smoothed instrumental quantile regression (SIVQR) methods. In addition to analysing an aggregate sample of top polluted economies, we perform a regional analysis by disaggregating the data. The findings reveal that digital financial inclusion boosts green investment in the full sample, Asia, America, Europe and Africa, while digital government promotes green investment in all the regions except Africa. The control variables of GDP, carbon emissions, foreign direct investment and human capital foster green investment in top polluted economies, while trade reduces green investment in these economies. On the policy front, an integrated approach with a central focus on digital governance and financial inclusion is required to boost green investment.

In most cases, the rules of the game in international trade are shaped by political economy, but this interplay is more noticeable in politically sensitive sectors such as agriculture. The balance between domestic political interests and the considerations concerning international relations changes over time in response to the joint action of a variety of factors, and this is mirrored in the multilateral trade regime governing this sector. Combining a broad set of empirical evidence available at the international level, this paper aims to capture the pattern of tariff and non-tariff protectionism in the global agricultural trade. The investigation leads to some stylized facts emerging from the selected data and provides interesting conclusions on the behaviour of governments in the equation of balancing domestic interests with the need for international collaboration. The pattern of protectionism in international trade in agricultural products is tariff--based, with a tendency towards softening of this protection in both developed and developing economies. Tariff protection is accompanied by a much lower level of non-tariff protection, where the most frequently used instrument is sanitary and phytosanitary standards, for reasons dictated partly by the specific nature of the sector.