Countries enact environmental regulations to achieve sustainable development and ecological sustainability. However, environmental regulations do not guarantee environmental sustainability unless implemented efficiently. Furthermore, political institutions play a key role in the formulation and management of environmental regulations. This research examines the relationship between democracy, environmental regulations, economic growth, and ecological footprint (EF) in the panel of G7 nations from 1985 to 2017. Second generation econometric techniques are used to analyze the data. The empirical evidence indicates that economic growth enhances EF while democracy and environmental regulations positively contribute to ecological sustainability by reducing EF. The causal outcomes reveal that democracy Granger causes EF and renewable energy indicating that democracy curbs environmental degradation and stimulates the share of renewables. Further, democracy and environmental regulations Granger cause each other. Lastly, the implication of these findings for sustainable development and ecological sustainability are discussed.

China’s rapid expansion of digital financial inclusion in the last few years has dramatically augmented the accessibility and affordability of financial services, predominantly serving formerly financially excluded people, and positively contributes to higher economic growth. Despite the importance of digital financial inclusion in promoting economic growth, empirical evidence is relatively thin. Moreover, none of the studies has considered human capital in the nexus. Therefore, this study examines the impact of digital financial inclusion and human capital on China’s provincial economic growth. Unlike previous studies, this study uses the new proxy of digital financial inclusion based on breadth of coverage, depth of usage, and digitalization level. The empirical findings show that digital financial inclusion and human capital significantly affect China’s provincial economic growth. Based on this study’s findings, we recommend investment in human capital development and, at the same time, upgrading digital financial inclusion to attain higher economic growth.

To study the economic and environmental effects of human capital, previous studies measure human capital based on education; however, this approach has many shortcomings because not all educated people are innovative human capital. Hence, this study introduces the concept of innovative human capital by developing a new index that measures human capital based on the number of patents every one million R&D staff full-time equivalent. After this, this paper studies the impact of innovative human capital on CO₂ emissions in China. The provincial panel data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2003 to 2017 is analyzed using the fixed effect, ordinary least squares, and the system generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM). The analysis revealed that innovative human capital alleviates environmental deterioration in China. The findings unfold the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) considering innovative human capital in the model. It implies that Chinese economic development will eventually support environmental sustainability if China continues to develop its innovative human capital. Among the control variables, economic structure, population density, and energy intensity stimulate environmental degradation by increasing CO₂ emissions. However, FDI has a negative relationship with CO₂ emissions. Lastly, the study proposes comprehensive policies to increase innovative human capital for environmental sustainability.