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Employing annual data over the period 1996–2013 for 29 OECD countries, this paper explores the impact of corruption on domestic innovative activity, measured by the number of patent and trademark applications, via a linear panel fixed effect model and a nonlinear panel smooth transition regression with all lagged explanatory variables as instrumental variables and under the consideration of potential endogeneity biases. The results indicate several important findings. First, there exists a strong threshold effect between the control of corruption and levels of innovative activity across nations. Second, we note that corruption only has a substantial positive impact on innovation when it is over the threshold level, but not when a country has a seriously corrupt government with low bureaucratic quality, no matter for patent or trademark applications. Hence, heterogeneous beliefs about low transition speed show that OECD countries may not take actions instantly and identically to pursue better bureaucratic quality. Finally, we discover that an improvement over corruption presents greater impacts on patent applications than on trademark applications. Taken together, we confirm that corruption plays a fundamental role in determining innovation activities in OECD countries, offering meaningful policy implications for those policymakers and industries in accordance with our findings.

The nexus between trade conflict and monetary policy is of great importance in international political and economic analysis. By employing data from a panel of global countries covering the period 2000–2015, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of trade conflict on monetary policy and how it works. We document the evidence that trade conflict has caused targeted countries to implement loose monetary policy. We also find that the impact of trade conflict is not only effective in the current year, but also continues in the next five years. In addition, we show that the significant impact on monetary policy is manifested in non-OECD countries and transition countries but not in OECD countries and non-transition countries. Consequently, we believe our findings should shed light on those policy makers in target countries, who can hopefully prepare for potential trade conflict and avoid similar disputes from interfering with the effectiveness of monetary policies in the domestic economy by providing practical currency and valuation strategies.

The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the environmental stringency on trade and the foreign direct investments (FDI) in particular. To do so, both theoretical and empirical investigations are performed. During the empirical investigation, an index of environmental sensitivity performance (IESP) is constructed for the OECD countries. Additionally, the main determinants of the OECD countries' FDI outflows are also analysed alongside with the environmental sensitivity variable for the countries in the sample.

The empirical analysis in this paper finds some evidence to suggest that environmental stringency has an important impact on the FDI outflows of the OECD countries. The impact of the degree of environmental stringency on the FDI is significantly positive implying a direct relationship between FDI outflows and relative environmental sensitivity performance of the OECD countries.

Green financing has been examined in the literature. However, its impact on carbon intensity has not been fully investigated. This research sets out to fill this gap by using the dimensions of green loans, securities, insurance, and investment. In exploring the connections between green financing, nonfossil energy use, and carbon intensity, we utilized data from 2016 to 2020 to run an advanced quantile modeling. We applied the decision-making unit-method of data envelopment analysis for analyses. Our main findings are as follows. Rapid advances in the green finance sector in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries were coupled with an increase in nonfossil energy usage, resulting in a decline in carbon intensity. When the growth in nonfossil energy consumption was reduced, green investment was put on hold, and the green financing industry would be negatively impacted. The role of green financing and carbon intensity in nonfossil energy use is coupled with strong government policy interventions. Nonetheless, the effects of green finance initiatives often lag. Moreover, these effects are inconsistent. This research suggests new methods to increase the use of nonfossil energy, build a carbon trading market, and increase the consumption of green financing policies post COVID-19.

This study focuses on the unequal relationship between energy consumption and its determinants. Past studies have not examined how minor and substantial currency value changes affect energy consumption in the organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD) countries. This study compares the effects of modest and significant exchange rate (ER) changes on energy demand (ED) in OECD countries, which include Greece, Belgium, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, Norway and Italy. Our work adds to the literature by distinguishing the effect of small to significant changes in currency fluctuations. We do this with a sophisticated model, an updated multiple threshold nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (MTNARDL). Next, we compare the model’s outcomes to conventional nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models. According to NARDL and ARDL estimates, co-integration is present in the context of Belgium. However, the MTNARDL model division of series suggests cointegration in all sample countries. It implies that this model is superior to previous ones. We conclude with policy recommendations based on the results of our inquiry.

Concomitantly with China’s rise as the manufacturing hub of the world as the 20th Century faded and the Western countries witnessed industrial restructuring, brownfields emerged as an urban problem in city regions, prompting research into how to achieve brownfield redevelopment. More recently, as the global economy diversified, brownfields, and demand for redevelopment have entered the scene of urban development in China, also becoming a research field. This paper reviews international peer reviewed scientific journals on brownfield redevelopment in China, with a focus on social science approaches. Utilizing a previous review of research on OECD countries, this paper indicates similarities and differences between China and Europe and North America in terms of brownfield redevelopment. The comparison shows that research on China is catching up with the international state-of-the-art literature, addressing topics related to pollution; land use and property development; land financing, property and economics; governance, state-market interactions and private–public partnerships; and decision-making systems. Especially, the focus on user rights versus property ownership appears important for international comparative research.

One of the main goals of a country is to achieve economic growth. This has led many researchers to understand and determine the factors that boost economic growth. The relationship between these two still remains to be unanswered. It has been discussed in many kinds of research that the variability could result from the different types of financial systems being observed by different countries. By taking 15 years of data from 32 OECD countries, this study attempted to identify if there is any difference in the effects of the factors of economic growth across two distinct financial systems (bank-based and market-based). The results of the study suggest that, overall, financial system differences influence the economic growth of a country. These insights give further clarification on how the economic growth determinants were acting differently in different countries.

This study analyses how stock and bond market illiquidity affect the bank lending channel. Our empirical analysis comprises a sample of 862 listed banks from 21 OECD countries between 2002 and 2015. We find that the bank lending channel plays an important role in the transmission mechanism of the monetary policy when financial markets are very liquid. However, as market liquidity decreases, the bank lending channel becomes less relevant and ends up being ineffective.

The disease caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) was one of the most significant health problems worldwide. The World Health Organization declared the event a global public health emergency in late January 2020 and then declared it a global pandemic in March 2020. The impressive and rapid spread of the virus was unprecedented and surpassed all expectations. With nearly every country in the world infected, the challenge of containing the virus became increasingly serious. The main objective of this study is to explore the potential of using data envelopment analysis (DEA) to establish international comparisons on the efficiency of implementing programs to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, thus allowing for the identification of a set of good practices. To do this, data from 18 countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development were used to assess the efficiency of infection control and medical treatment, models A and B, respectively. The results indicate that there is a notable variation in efficiency, suggesting that a better use of resources could prevent the spread of the virus and high mortality. The most efficient countries for both models are Slovenia and Latvia. Less efficient countries were Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland in the control of infection and Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in medical treatment. These results also demonstrate the potential strategic role of the DEA methodology for the efficient and effective planning of scarce resources to fight the pandemic.