The study investigates the long-run impact of tourism development on ecological footprint by employing the time-varying coefficient cointegration approach (TVC), in addition to the conventional cointegration techniques in the case of Azerbaijan for the period of 1996–2014. Based on the TVC estimation results, the coefficient of tourism development, which is the income elasticity of environmental degradation, was found to be time invariant. The paper uses energy consumption, trade, urbanization, and institutional quality indicators as control explanatory variables. The estimation results revealed that trade and energy consumption have statistically significant and positive impact on ecological footprint, while the coefficients of the other explanatory variables were found to be insignificant. Both the conventional estimation methods and the TVC concluded that, for the relationship between ecological footprint and tourism development, the EKC hypothesis is not present in Azerbaijan. Policy implications for the resource-rich economies have been discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the determinants of bank profitability in 13 post-Soviet countries. Within this scope, annual data between 1996 and 2016 is analyzed by using fixed effects panel regression and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). It is concluded that loan amount, non-interest income and economic growth are significant indicators of profitability. Moreover, the 2008 global mortgage crisis has a negative influence on bank profitability in post-Soviet countries. According to the estimation results, there is a positive relationship between non-interest income and economic growth with profitability. This result shows that when non-interest income of the banks increases, such as credit card fees and commission, it affects the financial performance of the banks, positively, and contributes to bank profitability. Another result of this study is that economic growth positively influences bank profitability. This result allows us to conclude that higher GDP comes with higher bank profitability for post-Soviet countries. Lastly, there is a negative relationship between loan-to-GDP ratio and profitability of the banks in post-Soviet countries. This means that when the ratio of total loans to GDP increases, it affects financial performance of the banks in a negative way. While considering this result, it is recommended that banks in post-Soviet countries should focus on ways to increase their non-interest income. Additionally, it is also significant for these banks to be careful and risk averse when lending to their customers.

This article examines the influence of renewable energy consumption, real GDP per capita, exports and imports on consumption-based CO₂ emissions in Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2019 by employing the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares Method (DOLS). The results reveal that renewable energy consumption has a negative impact on CO₂ emissions, while real GDP per capita has a positive effect. According to the findings, a 1% increase in renewable energy consumption leads to a 0.26% decrease in consumption-based CO₂ emissions, while a 1% rise in real GDP per capita leads to a 0.46% rise in consumption-based CO₂ emissions. In addition, imports and exports show positive and negative effects respectively. Numerically, a 1% rise in imports results in a 0.18% rise in CO₂ emissions, whereas a 1% increase in exports reduces CO₂ emissions by 0.16%. This is consistent with expectations and theoretical outcomes described in the functional specification and data section. The negative influence of renewable energy consumption, as well as the larger effect of imports, emphasize the necessity of implementing ecologically friendly measures in both energy sectors (particularly, the need to increase the share of renewable energy in total energy use) and international trade.

This study investigates the relationship between energy consumption, financial development, economic growth, and energy prices in Kazakhstan, utilizing VECM technique to the data spanning from 1993 to 2014. Estimation results reveal that there is a positive and statistically significant impact of financial development and economic growth on the energy consumption while, energy prices proxied by CPI has a negative effect on energy consumption in the long run for the Kazakhstani case which are in line with the expectations and with the theoretical findings. This finding also shows that a 1% increase in financial development and economic growth increases energy consumption by 0.11 and 0.39%, respectively.