Green energy is a crucial component in addressing expanding energy demands and combating climate change, but the possible negative repercussions of these technologies are frequently disregarded. Green energy’s deployment is tied to environmentally sustainable development goals (SDGs). It can only be achieved by scaling up the finance of investment that provides environmental benefits through new financial instruments and new policies, such as green banks, green bonds, community-based green funds, green central banking, etc. In an effort to address the issues with IPAT and ImPACT, this study employed the STIRPAT model approach, which is a proven framework for energy economics analysis. The author gathers yearly data spanning 2002–2018 for six ASEAN member countries with the aim of investigating the relationship between CO₂ emissions, green finance, energy efficiency, and the green energy index (GEX). After preliminary tests, the study employed the Westerlund test and Johansen Fisher test for long-term equilibrium and estimated the Granger causal links between variables using the generalized method of moments (GMM). The results indicate that green bonds are an effective technique for promoting green energy projects and considerably reducing CO₂ emissions. Therefore, governments should establish supporting policies with a long-term perspective to increase the investment of green energy projects related investment from private participants to ensure sustainable growth and address environmental challenges. This strategy may be appropriate during and after the COVID-19 period.

The study investigates the safe haven properties and sustainability of the top five cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Monero, and Ripple) and gold for BRICS stock markets during the COVID-19 crisis period from 31 January 2020 to 17 September 2020 in comparison to the precrisis period from 1 January 2016 to 30 January 2020, in a nonlinear and asymmetric framework using Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) methodology. Our results show that the relationship dynamics of stock market and cryptocurrency returns both in the short and long run are changing during the COVID-19 crisis period, which justifies our study using the nonlinear and asymmetric model. As far as a sustainable safe haven is concerned, Dash and Ripple are found to be a safe haven for all the five markets before the pandemic. However, all five cryptocurrencies are found to be a safe haven for three emerging markets, such as Brazil, China, and Russia, during the financial crisis. In a comparative framework, gold is found to be a suitable safe haven only for Brazil and Russia. The results have implications for index fund managers of BRICS markets to include Dash and Ripple in their portfolio as safe haven assets to protect its value during a stock market crisis.

Purpose: The paper analyzes downside and upside risk spillovers between stock markets of G7 countries and China before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approach: By using VAR-ADCC models and conditional value at risk (CoVaR) techniques, downside and upside risk spillovers between stock markets of G7 countries and China are analyzed before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.Findings: The results suggested existence of a significant and asymmetrical two-way risk transmission between majority of pair markets, but the degree of asymmetry differs according to the use of the entire cumulative distributions or distribution tails. Downside and upside risk spillovers are significantly larger before the COVID-19 pandemic in all cases except between CAC 40/DAX and S&P/SSE pairs.Originality/value: The paper used CoVaR and delta-CoVaR to investigate the downside and upside spillovers between stock markets of G7 countries and China before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper aims to investigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war on the interconnectedness between the US and China stock markets, major cryptocurrency and commodity markets using the wavelet coherence approach over the period from January 1 2016 to April 18 2022. The aim is to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war have affected the hedging efficiency of volatile crypto-currencies and gold. Wavelet coherency analysis unveils perceptual differences between the short-term and longer-term market reactions. In the short-run, we find strong co-movements during the first and second waves of the pandemic. During the first wave, longer-term investors were driven by the belief of future pandemic demise. They make use of time diversification that results in positive returns. During the Russia-Ukraine war, S&P 500 leads Bitcoin, BNB, and Ripple whereas Ethereum leads S&P 500 and SSE.