In recent years, the intersection of institutional quality and climate vulnerability has emerged as a critical yet largely untapped area of study, despite its profound implications for understanding resilience to environmental challenges and sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to establish a relationship between the quality of domestic institutions and climate vulnerability in the case of “Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)” economies. Annual data spanning the period 2002–2021 were sourced from the “World Governance Indicators (WGI)”, “World Development Indicators (WDI)”, and the “Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN)”, providing a valuable trace of examined variables. We have applied several econometric techniques including the “Pooled Least Squares (PLS)”, “Fixed Effects (FET)”, “Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS)”, and “Two Stages Least Squares (2SLS)” to estimate the specified models and extract results. Our findings indicate that enhanced institutional quality significantly reduces climate vulnerability in GCC economies. In other words, effective climate governance practices in GCC countries have successfully mitigated climate vulnerability across these economies. The causality analysis confirmed the one-way causality running from institutional quality towards climate vulnerability. On the other hand, increased income level, urbanization, and the degree of trade openness are the major threats as their impacts on climate vulnerability are positive and statistically significant. The results obtained offer valuable insights for policymakers in GCC economies seeking to formulate effective policies addressing climate vulnerability.

This research paper focuses on figuring out the impact of trade openness on FDI inflows, which has received relatively less attention in the literature, specifically in the context of ASEAN economies. The ASEAN region, which is relatively more open in terms of both trade openness as well as FDI inflows, is chosen as a sample. Annual data are gathered from “World Development Indicators (WDI)” and “World Governance Indicators (WGI)”. Reported results and findings are based on “Fixed Effect (FE) Modeling”, and the “Generalized Least Square (GLS)” is utilized for the robustness check. The results indicated that trade openness matters significantly for attracting FDI inflows. Similarly, institutional quality has also exerted a positive and significant influence on the inflows of FDI. The disaggregated analysis shows that five aspects of institutional quality, such as rule of law, regulatory quality, control of corruption, voice and accountability, and political instability and absence of violence, have positively and significantly impacted the FDI inflows in the case of selected ASEAN economies. The results demonstrated that exchange rate depreciation is harmful for the inflows of FDI. Moreover, FDI inflows responded positively to market size. Furthermore, the results showed that the impact of natural resources and inflation on FDI inflows is insignificant statistically. The present study suggests that the ASEAN policymakers manage their exchange rate effectively, improve the quality of institutions, and adopt vigorous trade liberalization policies to attract more FDI inflows.

Inflation across the globe after the COVID-19 pandemic has shown some persistence and followed an upward trend well above inflation targets and beyond normal historical movements. The Saudi inflation rate followed similar patterns of global trends, surging significantly and persisting well above the pre-pandemic levels. This paper examines determinants of inflation in Saudi Arabia, considering internal and external factors, and evaluates whether inflation responds to common global shocks or is largely influenced by macroeconomic variabilities within the economy. Findings and analyses in this paper are based on both conventional Auto Regressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) and non-linear ARDL (NARDL) models using quarterly level data to capture short-run dynamics and long-run relationships between inflation rate and examined macroeconomics variables, namely oil prices real effective exchange rate, money supply, and government spending. Reported results reveal an asymmetrical relationship between oil price fluctuations and inflation rate volatilities in Saudi Arabia. Inclines in oil prices lead to higher inflation, while the decline in oil prices does not alleviate inflationary pressures, and these results are consistent both in the short-run and the long run. The influence of pass-through real effective exchange rate is also evident in transmitting global shocks to local consumer prices in the long run, where a depreciation in real effective exchange rate results in a higher cost of imported goods, exerting additional stresses on local inflation. For factors within the economy, findings indicate a substantial long-term inflationary effect of money supply on the inflation rate in Saudi Arabia, where a one percent increase in the money supply led to more than one-third increase in inflation in the long run. On the other hand, while the influence of government spending on inflation was statistically significant, its impact is less pronounced in explaining the inflation rate’s variations. The analysis reveals that the evaluated variables exert a stronger influence on inflation in the long run. This underscores the critical need for policymakers to consider the cumulative effects of these determinants when formulating effective long-term inflation stabilization policies.

The influence of recent global shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian–Ukrainian war on the variability of major macroeconomic trends not only shows synchronized behavior across economies but also induces similar policy responses to counter these shocks. The purpose of this article is to explore the transmission of inflation among the G20 economies and evaluate its contribution to domestic inflation. To this end, we use the Diebold and Yilmaz spillover approach. The results that emerge from unconditional analysis reveal stark dissimilarities in inflation spillover patterns between advanced and emerging economies. Advanced economies are subject to higher spillover rates and thereby more exposed to global shocks compared to their emerging counterparts. Inflation in emerging countries is mainly derived from idiosyncratic shocks, while global shocks have only a modest influence on domestic inflation. In addition, bilateral spillovers among the G20 members show that the average pairwise directional spillovers between emerging economies are lower compared to advanced economies. The results pertaining to the spillover dynamics, on the other hand, show that total inflation spillover has a clear upward trend, indicating that the overall interconnectedness between G20 countries is increasing over time. Moreover, the estimates of spillover dynamics show a growing influence of received inflation spillovers from external shocks in both advanced and emerging economies. Policymakers in advanced economies are expected to respond to global shocks to mitigate the influence of spillovers, which is essential for economies that display high spillovers and turn out to be net receivers of shocks. However, public agencies in emerging economies should concentrate more on internal shocks to control inflation while not ignoring global shocks.

Inflation rate is considered undesirable in the modern globalized world due to its adverse and long-lasting impacts. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA, hereafter) has also experienced inflationary pressure during the last few years, specifically post-COVID-19. However, the empirical literature on the determinants of inflation is indeed very scarce in the context of KSA. Amid this backdrop, this research paper aims to figure out the true determinants of inflation by focusing on the role of supply chain disruptions and global uncertainty by focusing on KSA. Quantitative data were collected from credible sources on a monthly basis for the period of 1998M01 to 2024M02 and were analyzed through the “Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL)”. Our findings indicate that inflation in KSA is positively impacted by supply chain disruptions, global uncertainty, inflation spillovers from the United States, and money supply in the long run. Similarly, in the short run, only money supply, supply chain disruptions, and global uncertainty are responsible for the prevailing inflation rate in KSA. Moreover, the real effective exchange rate is positively and significantly linked with inflation only in the long run. Furthermore, positive shocks in oil prices cure inflation, while negative shocks in oil prices accelerate inflation in the short run. Our results are expected to shape policy formulation regarding the management of the inflation rate in KSA significantly.

This paper re-examines the role of trade and FDI inflows in accelerating the process of industrial growth involving countries belonging to the “Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)” region. Trade openness and foreign direct investment (FDI) have improved the growth performance of numerous economies and regions over the years. However, the specific role of both trade openness and FDI inflows in advancing the industrial growth process of economies has yet to be investigated in the case of economies belonging to ASEAN. This study analyzes data from 2000 to 2023 and employs several relevant econometric tools, including the “Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (POLS)”, “Fixed Effects Filter (FEF)”, “Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS)” and “Two Stages Least Squares (TSLS)”, to assess the specific impact of both trade openness and FDI inflows on industrial growth. Our findings show that both trade openness and FDI have advanced the industrial growth of ASEAN member economies. In terms of relative importance, the impact of trade openness is higher as compared to FDI inflows on the industrial sector. Similarly, the results demonstrate that the industrial growth of ASEAN economies could be explained positively by increased domestic investment and government expenditures. Moreover, our results indicate that the inflation rate and the natural resource sector have adversely impacted industrial growth. Finally, the labor force has not had the desirable positive impact on the industrial progress of ASEAN economies. The obtained results are robust across alternative specifications and estimation techniques. Therefore, our results have important policy implications for ASEAN economies.