The globalization revolution has led to many countries considering advancing technology, which has led to electronic finance becoming an important aspect in all economic and financial sectors. This study aims to investigate the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on the financial development index of six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries from the period 2000 to 2016. The results are reported in terms of two main ICT variables: fixed broadband and Internet users as a proxy of ICT and domestic credit to private sector as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) and broad money supply/GDP as two proxies of the financial development index. This methodology used fixed effects (FEs) estimations, and the results show that an increase in fixed broadband has a statistically significant and positive effect on both proxies of financial development. In terms of domestic credit as a percentage of the GDP proxy, the positive effects of ICT (broadband) are greater than the one from Internet users. A 1% increase in fixed broadband leads to approximately 2% increase in financial development, but the Internet user variable resulted in about a 0.09% increase. The other money supply proxy increased by 0.40% when ICT increased by 1%. Additionally, money supply increased by 0.11% when the Internet user ratio increased by 1% .To control for the endogeneity problem, the study used a generalized method of moments estimator, and the results confirm the previous results of the FE. Moreover, the negative impact of economic growth and natural resources was found to be valid and significant, while urbanization and trade openness were found to significantly and positively affect both financial development proxies. The main conclusion of the study is that GCC countries should take action in building an effective joint information system to help construct efficient economic sectors.

Phasing out fossil fuel dependency to adopt renewable energy technologies is pertinent for both ensuring energy security and for safeguarding the well-being of the environment. However, financial constraints often restrict the developing countries, in particular, from undergoing the renewable energy transition that is necessary for easing the environmental hardships. Against this background, this study makes a novel attempt to evaluate the impacts of FDI inflows on enhancing renewable energy use and attaining environmental sustainability in Bangladesh between 1972 and 2015. Using the autoregressive distributed lags with structural break approach to estimate the short- and long-run elasticities, it is found that FDI inflows enhance the share of renewable electricity output in the total electricity output levels of the country. Besides, FDI inflows are also evidenced to directly hamper environmental quality by boosting the ecological footprints figures of Bangladesh. Hence, it can be said that FDI promotes renewable electricity generation in Bangladesh but transforms the nation into a pollution haven. However, although FDI inflows cannot directly reduce the ecological footprints, a joint ecological footprint mitigation impact of FDI inflows and renewable electricity generation is evidenced. Besides, the findings also verify the authenticity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis in Bangladesh’s context. Therefore, economic growth can be referred to as being both the cause and the panacea to the environmental problems faced by Bangladesh. These results, in a nutshell, calls for effective measures to be undertaken for attracting the relatively cleaner FDI in Bangladesh whereby the objectives of renewable energy transition and environmental sustainability can be achieved in tandem. In line with these findings, several appropriate financial globalization policies are recommended.