Global Economy Journal

The original objective of this paper is to study the impact of the exchange rate on the trade balance for Kazakhstan and Russia. Baseline empirical results indicate that an exchange rate depreciation actually decreases exports and deteriorates the trade balance for these countries; this is the opposite of the traditional theory of the J-curve and Marshall–Lerner condition. The paper then explores why these major oil exporters do not conform to the theory. It argues that it is the oil price that affects both the exchange rate and the trade balance, thereby masking the true impact of the exchange rate on the trade balance. More formally, the paper augments the traditional theory to take into account the behavior of oil prices in the export and trade balance equations. The augmented theory posits that a decrease in the oil price leads to a real exchange rate depreciation and a decline in exports, thereby creating the positive correlation seen in the baseline results. In accordance with the augmented theory, the regression results suffer from omitted variable bias; when the oil price is taken into account, the results again support the theory.

Green financing is an emergent technology in recent days that supports the nature of environment with reduced carbon emissions. Also, the renewable energy sources or green resources are the most suitable options for improving the economic growth and sustainability of environment. Recently, many industrial organizations over the world were able to provide support to the deployment of green energy projects because it is less harmful to the environment and increases the financial development of country. Therefore, this paper objects to analyze the major effects of green financial strategies for developing the green energy projects. Moreover, it discussed about the recent trends of adopting green projects for ensuring the sustainability of environment with increased energy utilization. In addition to that, it examines various challenges and risks that are associated to the deployment of green financing strategy. The long-term financing, associated risks in project development, minimized return values, and lack of capacity are the major risks of green financing management systems. According to the recent reports, it is stated that the government sectors have an increased responsibility for funding the green projects to support the environment nature. Nevertheless, some of the public and private sectors in different countries are motivating the green energy projects by providing the financial support to the short-term and medium-term organizations for ensuring the sustainability of environment.

We analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the profitability of top-rated banks in the world using a comprehensive list of bank-specific ratios under post-lasso regressions based on GLS, FGLS and WLS techniques. While size and loans do not materially impound on profitability, a squeeze in the positive impact of asset utilization for all profitability metrics is conspicuously noted. COVID-19 induced declines in the negative impact of total impairment charges and provisions are noted for ROA and NIM while COVID-19-induced hike in the cost-to-income ratio is found for ROE. Findings also demonstrate that policy responses initiated during the crisis did not boost the profits of banks. From a policy perspective, sharing economy could manifest as a contemplated business model for banks, should the world relapse into another form of pandemic-related crisis.

This paper investigates the influences of global economic sanctions on corruption by using the structural gravity model for 148 sanctioned countries (108 developing countries and 40 developed countries) during the 1995–2018 period. We consider various forms of sanction, including arms, military, trade, finance, travel, and others. The results reveal that the imposition of sanctions, especially arm, financial, travel, and other sanctions have a significantly negative effect on the prevalence of corruption of target countries. The effects are also largely heterogeneous across sanctioned countries in terms of their economic development. Furthermore, the properties of the institutional quality of the sanctioned state critically affect the relationship between global sanctions and national corruption. Particularly, the well-developed institutional quality helps target countries address the consequences of global sanctions on national corruption. The empirical findings of this study are expected to provide vital insightful lessons for economists and policymakers in the target countries in combating the corruption pervasiveness.