India’s financial inclusion has significantly improved during the last several years. In recent years, there has been a rise in the number of Indians who have bank accounts, with this figure believed to be close to 80% at present. Fintech businesses in India are progressively becoming more noticeable as the Government of India (GoI) continues to strive for expanding financial services to the underbanked sector of the population. To reach the underbanked segments of the population and provide a stable operating environment for fintech businesses, India must seek to increase financial inclusion. In this study, regression and correlation were employed, together with secondary data gathered from the RBI, to analyze this influence. The aim was to determine the impact of fintech and digital financial services on financial inclusion in India. According to the results, fintech businesses have significantly aided financial inclusion in this nation, especially for the middle class. These findings will be helpful for policy-makers working hard to bring every individual in this country into an organized financial system.

There is serious debate among researchers regarding the sustainability implications of economic prosperity and energy dependence. Energy consumption has a critical linkage with economic growth, but it also degrades environmental quality. Therefore, it is important to investigate the relationship between economic growth, the energy mix, and environmental sustainability. However, empirical literature utilizes narrow variables to capture environmental sustainability. Because of this, this research introduces a new environmental sustainability variable using entropy weighting and combining deforestation, household carbon emissions, and life expectancy. This study examines the relationship between environmental sustainability, economic growth, and other selected variables using data from 2002 to 2019 for the G20 and its high-, upper-, and low-middle-income member countries. Since shocks in one G20 country can affect another, this study uses the Augmented Mean Group (AMG) technique for empirical analysis. The results of this study indicate that Gross Domestic Product (EG) and its square term did not support the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) theory. The energy mix has a positive impact on the environmental sustainability gap across all the samples except for the upper-middle-income group. Foreign direct investment positively affects this gap, while population growth has no significant impact. These findings demonstrate that policymakers should support environmentally friendly and clean energy sources to foster long-term economic growth and sustainability.

The Internet’s meteoric rise in popularity has led to the growing importance of the quality of online services in numerous industries, including the rapidly expanding tourism industry. Accordingly, this study aims to ascertain the leading attributes of selected travel websites based on sustainable e-service quality. This study was conducted in four phases. In phase I, the key drivers of sustainable e-service quality (SESQ) were identified from a literature review and expert opinions and then categorized and validated using the EFA technique based on the responses of 100 respondents in phase II. Phase III was performed to determine the priority weightage of the identified and validated SESQ drivers using AHP, whereas in phase IV, the five most popular travel websites in India were ranked based on the SESQ drivers using the TOPSIS method. A case study is presented in this paper to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to determine the robustness of the results. The findings of the study revealed that security, hedonic value, and efficiency were the most important drivers of SESQ that influenced customers’ selection of travel websites, and makemytrip.com was the most preferred travel website by customers.

Innovation activities have gained much importance due to their pivotal role in achieving economic growth – directly by increasing productivity and – indirectly by increasing the degree of trade openness. This study aims to focus on the indirect channel, a rarely explored area of research, especially in the context of emerging economies. To achieve the aim of the study, four proxies of innovation (resident patent applications, nonresident patent applications, scientific and technical journal articles, and research and development expenditures) are used to establish a robust relationship between innovation activities and trade openness in BRICS economies. Panel data from 2000 to 2020 is obtained from World Development Indicators and Penn World Tables. Econometric techniques of panel data such as fixed effect and generalized least squares are employed to extract results from the specified models. The findings of the study revealed that three proxies of innovation (i.e., resident patent applications, nonresident patent applications, scientific and technical journal articles) have a significant positive role in improving trade openness in the BRICS economies. However, the fourth proxy of innovation i.e., research and development expenditures had a negative impact on the degree of trade openness. Besides, innovation activities such as inflation rate and foreign direct investment have also influenced the degree of trade openness positively and significantly. Conversely, GDP per capita had a negative relationship with trade openness. Moreover, domestic investments showed a positive influence on the degree of trade openness while employment had a negative and insignificant influence on the degree of trade openness. Finally, the causality analysis revealed a one-way relationship running from innovations to trade openness. In view of the results obtained, the policymakers of the BRICS economies might focus on encouraging innovation activities to enhance the degree of trade openness. Increased trade openness will consequently contribute to economic growth enormously and thus the attainment of sustainable development goals (SDG-8). Policymakers are also suggested to encourage FDI inflows and further ensure a moderate inflation rate to improve the degree of trade openness and hence accelerate economic growth. This study focused on examining the nexus between innovation activities and trade openness in emerging economies, which is indeed an interesting but rarely explored area of research. The findings of the study might help the policymakers of the BRICS economies in formulating policies regarding trade openness and innovation activities.

The current study investigates the impact of economic growth, carbon emission, temperature, and environmental technology on public health in GCC countries. Panel data from 1990 to 2020 is used, and the panel unit root test is used to check the stationarity of the data. After cointegration analysis, the ARDL estimation technique checks the long-run and short-run association between variables. The results have proved that economic growth enhances exposure to PM2.5 and mortality but helps in increasing life expectancy. Likewise, carbon emission also enhances exposure to PM2.5 and mortality but improves life expectancy. As far as temperature is concerned, although it increases the exposure to PM2.5, it also increases life expectancy. It is also found that environmental technology enhances exposure to PM2.5. For policy implication, the study reports that investment in research and development and modifications the energy mix are key measures to enhance the public health in GCC countries.