Sustainability performance varies significantly across countries, yet global assessments overlook the underlying structural trends. This study bridges this gap using machine learning to uncover meaningful clustering in global sustainability outcomes based on the 2025 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Index. We applied K-Means clustering to group 166 countries into five standardized indicators: SDG score, spillover effects, regional score, population size, and recent progress. The five-cluster solution was confirmed by the Elbow and Silhouette procedures, with ANOVA and MANOVA tests subsequently indicating statistically significant cluster differences. For the validation and interpretation of the results, six supervised learning algorithms were employed. Random Forest, SVM, and ANN performed best in classification accuracy (97.7%) with perfect ROC-AUC scores (AUC = 1.0). Feature importance analysis showed that SDG and regional scores were most predictive of cluster membership, while population size was the least. This supervised–unsupervised hybrid approach offers a reproducible blueprint for cross-country benchmarking of sustainability. It also offers actionable insights for tailoring policy to groups of countries, whether high-income OECD nations, emerging markets, or resource-scarce countries. Our findings demonstrate that machine learning is a useful tool for revealing structural disparities in sustainability and informing cluster-specific policy interventions toward the 2030 Agenda.

The environment has received particular concern since the 1950s when countries began to experience the negative impacts of environmental degradation. This study employs cointegration and causality analyses to explore the influence of stringent environmental policies and business regulations on economic growth between 2000 and 2015 in the Group of Seven and BRICS economies. The causality analysis shows that business regulations have a significant effect on economic growth in the short run, while stringent environmental policies have no significant effects during that time. The cointegration analysis, however, reveals a mixed interaction among stringent environmental policies, business regulations, and economic growth depending country specific characteristics.

Doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımlari, özellikle yetersiz tasarrufa sahip ülkeler için sürdürülebilir ekonomik büyüme ve kalkınma için önem taşımaktadır. Ayrıca, doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımları yoluyla transfer edilen sermaye, teknoloji, bilgi ve üretkenliğin, içsel büyüme teorileri kapsamında ev sahibi ülkelerin ekonomik büyümesine katkı sağlayabileceği öne sürülmektedir. Doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımları, yeşil alan veya kahverengi alan yatırımları olmak üzere iki türde yapılabilmektedir. Yeşil alan yatırımları şeklindeki doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımları istihdama doğrudan veya doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımları ekonomik büyümeyi artırarak istihdama dolaylı katkı sağlayabilmektedir. Ayrıca, doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımları bir yandan finansal sistemdeki fonları artırarak finansal sektörün gelişimine katkı sağlayabilirken, diğer yandan doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımları finans sektörüne rakip oldukları için finans sektörünün gelişimini olumsuz da etkileyebilmektedir. Bununla birlikte ilgili literatür dikkate alındığında; doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımı yapan yatırımcıların genellikle belirli bir ekonomik büyüme, istihdam ve finansal sektör gelişimine sahip olan ülkeleri tercih ettikleri görülmektedir. Bu bağlamda, teorik olarak doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımları ile ekonomik büyüme, istihdam ve finans sektörünün gelişimi arasında karşılıklı bir etkileşim söz konusu olabilmektedir.Dünyada 1980’li yıllardan itibaren liberalleşme ve küreselleşmenin hızlanması ile birlikte doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımlarında önemli artışlar olmuştur. Birçok ülke doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımlarının ekonomik büyüme ve istihdam üzerindeki pozitif etkilerini göz önünde bulundurarak kurumsal ve mali teşviklerle doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımı çekmeye çalışmaktadırlar. Bu çalışmada panel nedensellik analizi kullanılarak OECD ülkeleri örnekleminde 1995-2018 döneminde doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımları ile ekonomik büyüme, istihdam ve finansal gelişme arasındaki karşılıklı etkileşim incelenmiştir. Çalışma sonucunda ekonomik büyüme ile istihdamdan doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımlarına doğru; doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımlarından finansal gelişmeye doğru tek yönlü nedensellik olduğu belirlenmiştir. Bir başka deyişle ekonomik büyüme ile istihdamın doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımları üzerinde anlamlı bir etkiye sahip olduğu, doğrudan yabancı sermaye yatırımlarının ise finans sektörünün gelişimi üzerinde anlamlı bir etkiye sahip olduğu tespit edilmiştir.

1. LITERATUREIndividual pension companies are one of the important institutional investors of the financial system and make a significant contribution to the development of the financial system with the long-term investment perspective. The limited number of studies have been conducted on the factors affecting the participation of the persons to the individual pension system. The relevant literature has revealed that financial literacy level positively affects the participation of the persons to the individual pension system. 1.1. RESEARCH SUBJECT The research subject is the effect of financial literacy and demographic characteristics on the participation of the persons to the individual pension in the sample of Usak University staff. 1.2. RESEARCH PURPOSE AND IMPORTANCE The research purpose is to analyze the effect of the financial literacy level and demographic characteristics of persons to the participation to the individual pension system. The determination of factors having effect on the individual pension system’s participation is important for determination of the right policies to raise the size of the private pensions system considering the roles of pension funds in the financial system. 1.3. CONTRIBUTION of the ARTICLE to the LITERATURE The limited number of studies have investigated the impact of financial literacy on participation to the individual pension system. Furthermore, this study is one of the early studies researching the impact of financial literacy on individual pensions system’s participation for a sample in Turkey. 2. DESIGN AND METHOD The effect of the financial literacy level and demographic characteristics on the participation of the persons to the individual pension system was investigated through factor analysis and logistic regression analysis. 2.1. RESEARCH TYPE The quantitative research was conducted to examine the effect of financial literacy and demographic characteristics on the persons’ participation to the individual pension system. 2.2. RESEARCH PROBLEMS The effect of basic, medium and advanced level financial literacy levels together with demographic characteristics on participation to the individual pension system were analyzed. 2.3. DATA COLLECTION METHOD The data set was obtained through questionnaire method. 2.4. QUANTITATIVE / QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS The factor analysis and logistic regression analysis were conducted in the context of quantitative analysis. 2.5. RESEARCH MODEL The effect of financial literacy level and demographic characteristics on the participation to the individual pension system was analyzed by the following model. BESUYE: Participation to the individual pension system CINS: GenderYAS: Age EGTM: Education level CALSURE: Employment period FINSURE: Financial market experienceTFOY: Basic financial literacy levelOFOY: Medium financial literacy levelIFOY: Advanced financial literacy level 2.6. RESEARCH HYPOTHESES The effect of basic, medium, and advanced financial literacy level together with demographic characteristics on the participation to the individual pension system was researched. 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The empirical analysis revealed that individuals’ basic financial literacy levels were quite high and that the ratio of correct responses to the basic financial literacy questions was 88%. The ratio of correct responses to the medium level financial literacy questions was found as 41.3 %. The ratio of correct response to the advanced financial literacy questions was found as 38.4%. The logistic regression analysis disclosed that only advanced financial literacy level negatively affected the participation of the persons to the individual pension system. Furthermore, the men’s participation to the individual pension system was higher, age negatively affected the participation to the individual pension system and employment term positively affected the participation to the individual pension system. 3.1. FINDINGS as a RESULT of ANALYSIS The participants’ basic financial literacy level was quite high, but their medium and advanced financial literacy level was relatively low. Furthermore, basic and medium financial literacy level had no significant impacts on the participation to the individual pension system and advance financial literacy level negatively affected the participation of the persons to the individual pension system. 3.2. HYPOTHESIS TEST RESULTS The logistic regression analysis revealed that gender, age, employment term and advanced level financial literacy had a significant effect on the participation to the individual pension system. But education level, financial markets experience, basic and medium financial literacy levels had no significant effects on the participation to the individual pension system. 3.3. DISCUSSING the FINDINGS with the LITERATURE The impact of various financial literacy levels on the participation to the individual pension system contradicted with the related literature. The insignificant impact of basic and medium financial literacy level and the negative impact of advanced financial literacy level on the participation to the individual pension system could have resulted from sample specific characteristics. 4. CONCLUSION, RECOMMENDATION AND LIMITATIONS 4.1. RESULTS of the ARTICLE The empirical analysis revealed that basic and medium financial literacy levels were not significant determinants of participation to the individual pension system. However, advances financial literacy level negatively affected the participation to the individual pension system. Furthermore, demographic variable of age had a negative impact, but men had a positive impact on the participation to the individual pension system. Also, employment term positively affected the participation to the individual pension system. 4.2. SUGGESTIONS BASED on the RESULTS The findings of the study revealed that advanced financial literacy level negatively affected the participation to...

Terrorism has still a serious problem for many countries despite the improvements in combat with terrorism during the recent years. Many institutional, economic, and social factors have been documented as the possible causes of terrorism in the related literature. This research explores the reciprocal interaction between human development, main macroeconomic variables of real GDP per capita, unemployment, youth unemployment, and inflation and terrorism in Middle East and North African countries over the 2005-2019 period through causality analysis with cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity. The causality analysis discovered a reciprocal interaction between human development, unemployment, youth unemployment, inflation and terrorism and a significant causality from real GDP per capita to the terrorism.

All the countries are faced with the population aging resulting from the rising life expectancy and decreasing fertility rates at the present time and in turn have experienced many social and economic implications. In this research, the authors explore the causal interaction between population aging and health expenditures in a sample of EU member economies during the 2000-2018 period through Dumitrescu and Hurlin causality analysis. The causality analysis revealed a unilateral causality from health expenditures to population aging.