Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the long-term impacts of health capital on economic growth in Singapore from 1980 to 2013.Design/methodology/approach: Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)-ECM methodology and several diagnostic and specification tests were used to estimate the impact of health capital on economic growth on time series data covering the period 1980-2013.Findings: The results confirm that health capital (measure by health expenditure per capita) positively and significantly affects Singapore’s economic growth in the long run. In addition, the equilibrium error correction coefficient lagged by one in the short-run is approximately 83.25 percent for all estimated variables, implying a considerably high speed of long-term adjustment to equilibrium following a short-term shock. Moreover, the Toda-Yamamoto’s Granger causality estimation reveals that there is a unidirectional causality from health expenditure per capita to GDP per capita.Research limitations/implications: The findings imply that Singapore’s economic growth could be improved significantly if expenditure on health capital is increased. This eventually would have a substantial impact on human productivity which leads to improved output per capita. Thus, policy makers and/or the government should strive to create institutional capacity to improve basic health service by strengthening the health institutions infrastructure that produces healthy and quality manpower.Originality/value: Grounded on the premises that there are little or no studies on the impact of health capital on Singapore economy, this paper provides new evidence on the potential effect of health capital on Singapore’s economic growth over the last three decades. Also, this study explore the causal effect (unidirectional or bidirectional) between health capital and economic growth.

China has been the world’s largest market for industrial robots since 2013. Industrial robots improve accuracy, safety, and efficiency in industrial production but have a substantial impact on the labor market. This investigation uses the task-based model to explore the relationship between industrial robots and employment across industries. This study uses industrial robot data from the International Federation of Robotics and employment data from the China Statistical Yearbook from 2010 to 2019 to examine robot applications’ influencing mechanisms on labor demand in different industries in China. The results show a significant positive correlation between robots’ exposure and labor demand for IT, health and social services, science research and technical services, and management of water conservancy and environmental industries. Based on the results, the use of robots promotes high-skilled talent employment and some third-sector employment, like education, food and beverages, utilities, household appliances, and transport. However, multiple regression analysis reveals that the use of robots has reduced employment in traditional industries such as agriculture and mining.

In this paper, we investigate the impact of trade liberalization on tax structure in a panel 97 developing countries for the period 1993-2012. Our empirical results, based on the fixed-effect estimator, reveal that trade liberalization in the form of trade openness did not seem to have a strong impact on major tax sources of developing countries. Instead, trade liberalization in the form of tariff reduction seems to have a contribution to tax structure in these countries

As a measuring tool of industrial sustainable development, industrial eco-efficiency works as a link between economic benefit and environmental pressure. Industrial agglomeration and energy have always been considered an important influence factor on industrial eco-efficiency. The Chinese government is facing the challenge of reaching a Carbon Peak by the 2060s, within this context, it is critically important to explore the relationship between industrial agglomeration and industrial eco-efficiency, moreover, energy intensity may play a key role between them, which should not be ignored. Therefore, based on the STIRPAT model, this paper constructs a spatial autocorrelation model (SAC model) to analyze the provincial panel dataset from 2009 to 2018, and it is found that: First, the industrial agglomeration has an inverted N-shaped relationship with industrial eco-efficiency, and industrial eco-efficiency indeed have a positive spatial spillover effect. Second, energy intensity plays a mediating role, industrial agglomeration would affect industrial eco-efficiency through energy intensity. Therefore, it is suggested that the government should introduce differentiated industrial agglomeration policies as well as energy-saving policies. In addition, this paper suggests that policymakers should adhere to consistent industrial sustainable development policies.

This study examines the impact of foreign aid and institutions on income inequality in 23 African countries during the period from 2005 to 2017. The study used a newly proposed novel dynamic panel threshold technique. The results of the study found an institutional quality threshold value of 1.622. Below the threshold, foreign aid was found to positively and significantly influence income inequality. However, above the threshold, the coefficient of foreign aid was negative with statistical significance. This implies that foreign aid tends to diminish income inequality in the presence of quality institutions. The study also used the quantile regression method to check for robustness. It showed that the conclusion between aid and inequality is the same in most of the quantiles (0.1 and 0.2). The findings can be worthwhile for sketching proper aid policies to lessen inequality. Policymakers in Africa should prioritize establishing high-quality institutions and developing measures to improve existing ones. Thus, aid could potentially reduce income inequality. This study suggests that it is important to note that aid programs can be effective when tailored to the particular needs and circumstances of each beneficiary country, as one-size-fits-all methods may not produce the anticipated outcomes.