Agricultural sector is significant for Sub-Saharan African countries and is highly exposed and sensitive to climate change. This study aims to investigate the overall long-run impacts of temperature and precipitation on agricultural growth in 32 Sub-Saharan African countries. As proposed by Chudik and Pesaran, our estimations are based on augmented autoregressive distributed lag(ARDL) modelling and panel estimators with multifactor error structures. We estimate the “dynamic common correlated long-run effects (DCCE)” through the cross-sectionally augmented distributed lag (CS-DL) approach as well as through the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL). For robustness check, we also consider the cross-sectionally augmented error correction method (CS-ECM) and the common dynamic process augmented mean group (AMG). The study suggests that rising temperatures have significantly developed a negative long-term relationship with the agricultural growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, the long-run effect of precipitation is less important and not statistically significant in most estimations. According to the CS-DL approach, the negative impact of a 1°Crise in temperature could be as high as a 4.2 to 4.7 percentage point decrease in the agricultural growth rate. The results indicate that the warming climate has considerably damaged the agrarian activities in Sub-Saharan Africa, necessitating adaptive climate measures to avoid any food scarcity or economic stagnation in agricultural driven African countries.

From an idealistic viewpoint, the existence of the tourism industry in a country/region is a blessing because of its anticipated sustainable economic benefits. To turn this idealistic state into a realistic one, institutions need to play a pivotal role in optimizing the desired incentives. The present study examines the asymmetric role of institutional quality in stimulating tourism inflows (receipts and arrivals) in selected Asia Pacific countries involved in tourism. The previous literature has established that improving institutional quality attracts tourism inflows to a destination. However, the literature fails to identify the specific point (threshold level) above (below) which the relationship turns positive (negative). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that estimates the asymmetries in the nexus of institutions and tourism inflows, using robust nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag approach. Our results show that the tourism inflow in Asian Pacific countries responds asymmetrically to any changes in institutional quality, and there is a single threshold of 7.52 points, where the impact of institutional quality reverses. We conclude that our findings are robust to the alternative measures of tourism inflows. The study offers useful policy inputs for devising short and long-run policies for the betterment of the institutional framework in the region by understanding the asymmetric impact of institutional quality on tourism inflow.

Housing is a basic human need and its affordability has become a concern with the exponential population growth, especially in densely populated developing countries. Rapid urbanization, inadequate housing and increasing slums have also brought environmental challenges to urban areas of developing countries. To address such concerns, Green Affordable Housing (GAH) has emerged as a concept with the convergence of ideas and actions of affordable housing and sustainability. This research aims to identify the GAH adoption strategies and the financial options through case study analysis of three South Asian Economies (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) and validated the case study outcome by using content analysis approach. The findings reveal that India has made notable progress in establishing a GAH financial market, while Pakistan and Bangladesh are struggling due to a lack of appropriate funds and underrated financial markets. This study further proposed the financing framework to achieve GAH for South Asian economies because the low-income Credit Link Subsidy Scheme alone supporting the adoption of GAH would not be enough. The study provides policy recommendations for using Credit Link subsidies, energy-efficient mortgages, and Public-Private Partnerships for housing investment as effective methods for financingGAH.

BACKGROUND: e-lancing rapid growth poses new challenges in talent management. Gig workers have become an alternate workforce to the organization, which offer technical skills, flexible working hours and cost-effective solutions. This study extends the conceptualization of employee value proposition in the context of freelancers. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of freelancer value preposition and platform trust in shaping platform usage intentions. The reflective-formative model is designed to comprehend the freelancer value proposition. METHODS: Online survey method was used and data was collected from 454 freelancers with the help of an adapted questionnaire. PLS-SEM is applied to test the hypothesis. RESULTS: The results exhibit that the Developmental Value (DV), Economic Value (EV) and Social Value (SV) contribute positively in the Freelancer Value Proposition. Furthermore, it shows that attitude towards the use of platform partially mediate platform usage intentions; Moreover, Platform trust has a positive impact on platform usage intentions. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the freelancer value proposition, the study emphasizes on the need to develop relationship with gig-workers in order to fulfil the rising demand of sustainable workforce and to remain competitive in the dynamic business environment.

Rural Energy Poverty is among the most prevalent forms of energy deprivation and is grave concern for economies with reliance on agricultural activities. This study highlights the significance of achieving SDG 7 (Affordable Clean Energy) as a prerequisite for the SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 2 (Zero Hunger). In this context, the relationship between rural energy poverty and rice production efficiency is examined in major rice producing countries from 1990-2024. While considering the rural energy characteristics, REPI (Rural Energy Poverty Index) is constructed, whereas efficiency is estimated through Data Envelopment Analysis, decomposed into three dimensions i.e., Managerial, Operational and Scale efficiency and considers population-weighted temperature and precipitation. The results reveal that REPI significantly reduces managerial and operational efficiency while illustrating weak association with scale efficiency, indicating adverse effects on farm management and resource utilization processes rather than scale of productions. In addition, precipitation positively contributes to efficiency, indicating the ease on irrigation-energy burden, whereas temperature effects remain inconclusive under annual aggregation method. The heterogeneity analysis strengthens the findings by exhibiting the adverse effects concentrated among low efficiency producers, indicating that rural energy poverty is detrimental to efficiency and widens the gap between resilient and constrained economies. The results imply that financing should be directed towards energy-productivity investments, evaluated by energy service quality rather than grid infrastructure. This study emphasizes prioritizing countries where persistent deprivation and lower efficiency coexist, signifying the need for integrated water-energy planning through regulated solar-powered irrigation to strengthen food security and sustainable global food supply chains.