This study examines how patents on green technologies impact Algeria's ecological footprint from 1990 to 2022 while controlling for economic growth and energy consumption. The objectives are to analyze the asymmetric effects of positive and negative shocks in these drivers on ecological footprint and provide policy insights on leveraging innovations and growth while minimizing environmental harm. Given recent major structural shifts in Algeria's economy, time series data exhibits nonlinear dynamics. To accommodate this nonlinearity, the study employs an innovative nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag approach. The findings indicate that an upsurge in green technologies (termed as a positive shock) significantly reduces the ecological footprint, thereby enhancing ecological sustainability. Interestingly, a decline in green technologies (termed as a negative shock) also contributes to reducing the ecological footprint. This highlights the crucial role of clean technologies in mitigating ecological damage in both scenarios. Conversely, a positive shock in economic growth increases ecological footprint, underscoring the imperative for environmentally friendly policies in tandem with economic expansion. Negative shocks, however, have minimal impact. In a similar vein, positive shock in energy consumption increases ecological footprint, underlining the importance of transitioning towards cleaner energy sources. Negative shock has a smaller but still noticeable effect. The results confirm asymmetric impacts, with positive and negative changes in the drivers affecting Algeria's ecological footprint differently. To ensure long-term economic and ecological stability, Algeria should prioritize eco-innovation and green technology development. This will reduce dependence on fossil fuels and create new, sustainable industries.

The purpose of this paper is to gauge the various determinants of social sector spending captured by social protection and education spending in a cross section of developing countries, a subject on which there is scant empirical evidence. We hypothesize that fiscal capacity is necessary but not sufficient for resource allocation in this area, because the political will to do so must also be present. Using a panel data instrumental variable approach, we find that greater fiscal capacity robustly raises social spending in developing countries in the period 1990 to 2010. It is also strongly evident that rising democratisation enhances social sector spending; the presence of greater democracy and higher fiscal capacity could reinforce this effect. Our work also innovatively incorporates inequality into the analysis, finding that social expenditure is greater in more egalitarian societies. Military expenditure also appears to crowd out social protection expenditure, but not robustly.