This study examines the impact of institutional quality on foreign direct investment (F.D.I.) by categorising the countries as developed or developing. We measured institutional quality by the sum of control of corruption and rule of law indicators. We provide evidence that institutional quality positively and significantly impacts F.D.I. in developed countries; specifically, we find that a one standard deviation change in governance significantly affects F.D.I. by a factor of 0.2225 (using common law and the lagged values of the independent variables as instruments). Ceteris paribus, the results for the developing countries demonstrate that the institutional quality impact is insignificant because of the weak structure of institutions. Result findings strongly support the significance of governance indicators in attracting F.D.I. inflows. From our results, we infer that the relevance of governance indicators tends to be a key point in attracting F.D.I. inflows.

The advancement of the big data industry is playing a pivotal role in urban land management refinement. Recently, China initiated a big data strategy, establishing national big data comprehensive pilot zones (NBDCPZs) across diverse regions. These initiatives present substantial opportunities for enhancing the urban land green use efficiency (ULGUE). Consequently, in this study, we utilized the super-efficiency slack-based measure (SBM) model with undesirable outputs to assess the ULGUEs across 281 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2021. Subsequently, leveraging the NBDCPZ establishment as a quasi-natural experiment, we employed the difference-in-differences (DID) method to empirically explore the impact of the NBDCPZ policy on the ULGUE for the first time. The findings revealed the following: (1) The implementation of the NBDCPZ policy significantly enhances the ULGUE; (2) the effects are mediated through mechanisms such as fostering technological innovation, mitigating resource misallocation, and promoting industrial agglomeration; (3) the heterogeneity analysis emphasizes the increased policy effectiveness in cities characterized by fewer natural resources, lower economic growth pressures, stable development stages, and moderate digital infrastructure and human capital levels; and (4) further analysis demonstrates the significant positive spillover effects of the NBDCPZ policy on the ULGUEs of neighboring non-pilot cities, with a diminishing impact as the proximity between pilot and non-pilot cities decreases. Overall, this study contributes to the literature on the relationship between the digital economy and land utilization, offering valuable insights for achieving sustainable urban development.

Our study explores the impact of financialization on carbon emissions by utilizing diverse financialization proxies, particularly for China. We examine the impact of financialization, institutional quality, globalization, natural resources, trade openness, and renewable and nonrenewable energy consumption on environmental pollution over the period 1996–2017 by utilizing dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) simulations. The empirical findings of the study indicate that institutional quality, trade, globalization, natural resources, and renewable energy consumption significantly decrease environmental pollution in the long run, while foreign direct investment and financialization have neutral effects on carbon emissions. Our findings demonstrate that a 1% increase in institutional quality, trade, IFDI, renewable energy, and globalization leads to a decrease in CO2 emissions by 0.198, 0.016, 0.075, 0.010, and 0.072%, respectively. Even though financialization indexes contributed insignificantly to environmental degradation, other explanatory variables significantly affected carbon emissions through indirect effects of financialization. Financialization indexes behave in a similar context, and these proxy indicators are good parameters to understand the complex nature of financialization. Moreover, in order to achieve low carbon emissions and sustainable development, countries need viable financial institutions that focus on green growth by promoting clean production process strategies to ensure the reduction of CO₂ emissions.

This empirical study has examined the impact of Chinese investments, namely infrastructure, energy, services, other investment sectors, and trade openness on the economies of the 25 Asian and North African countries along with the Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative for a period of 2007 to 2016 using the Johansen Fisher Panel Cointegration Test, Panel Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (PDOLS) model, and the Toda and Yamamoto technique for testing causality. The findings revealed cointegration among the variables and that the impact of Chinese investments on economic growth in the host countries is positive, but it has a weaker effect, to a certain extent, in all sectors of the host countries while trade openness positively impacts the countries. Furthermore, there is evidence of a unidirectional causality between some FDI (foreign direct investment) economies while the investment in services and other sectors does not cause economic growth in the host countries. Based on the results, the paper proposes that the host countries increase the FDI in the sector of infrastructure, energy, and technology to enhance their economies.