This study examines how entrepreneurial sustainability varies across country development contexts and between early-stage and established entrepreneurs. Using country-level data derived from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor sustainability module and matched SDG Index scores, the analysis covers 49 countries and compares four distinct dimensions of entrepreneurial sustainability: sustainability orientation, sustainability action, SDG awareness, and SDG prioritization. Rather than treating entrepreneurial sustainability as a single construct, the study distinguishes between how entrepreneurs frame sustainability, how they act on it, and how they relate to the formal SDG agenda. The results show that entrepreneurial sustainability is developmentally uneven, but not in a linear or uniform way. Early-stage entrepreneurs report significantly stronger sustainability orientation than established entrepreneurs, especially in terms of social consideration and prioritizing social and/or environmental impact over profitability or growth. However, they do not report higher overall sustainability action, while established entrepreneurs report significantly more environmental action. At the country level, higher SDG Index scores are associated with greater entrepreneurial awareness of the SDGs, but with lower sustainability orientation and lower SDG prioritization. Sustainability action, by contrast, is not systematically associated with country-level SDG performance. These findings suggest that awareness, commitment, and action should not be conflated. The paper contributes to research on sustainable entrepreneurship and global development by showing that entrepreneurial sustainability reflects an uneven and only partially aligned translation of global sustainability agendas across country contexts and entrepreneurial stages.
Globalization reshapes the social fabric and institutional capacity of states through intensified cross-border flows. This study investigates the evolution and interaction of state fragility and cultural diversity across 94 countries in 2010, 2015, and 2020. State fragility is assessed via the Fragile States Index (FSI). Linguistic and religious fractionalization are measured through the Greenberg diversity formula, while polarization is quantified using the Reynal-Querol formula. Controlling for economic development, population dynamics, and spatial spillovers, the panel dataset examines shifts in fragility and diversity across countries. The Mundlak-style linear mixed model revealed that long-term, structural cultural characteristics display a robust alignment with state fragility, while short-term variations show little to no relationship. The data indicates a clear divergence between cultural dimensions The Mundlak between-country estimates reveal that long-term structural religious fractionalization is associated with greater state stability within affluent boundaries, though this relationship is absent in less affluent countries. The within-component, however, positively aligns fragility, though marginally. In contrast to this, high linguistic diversity systematically aligns with increased fragility within affluent boundaries. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates that these relationships are heavily conditioned by national wealth, as rigid religious polarization displays a strong positive alignment with state weakness exclusively within less affluent settings.
This study made an attempt to establish a theoretical outline among the digital globalization, technological advances, and its socio-economic impacts. It does not view digital globalization as a linear phenomenon or a process that is good for everyone. Instead, it sees it as a field with uneven access, power, and capabilities. The proliferation of digital technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), is significantly influencing organizational behaviour, legal frameworks, and socioeconomic structures. The main contribution of seven articles included in this SI go beyond abstract theorization by showing how digital change happens in specific institutional and regional contexts. They address three interconnected themes: (1) institutional agility and digital skilling; (2) geopolitics, regulation, and the ethics of emerging technologies; and (3) socio-economic drivers and barriers to technological adoption in context of digital globalization and the spread of technology. The contributions across these areas demonstrate that rather than being fundamentally deterministic, technological change is shaped by human decision-making, organizational structures, and larger political economic processes.
Online media communication and the digital spread of ideas have become an important component of globalization. Relatedly, previous research has found that online media consumption affects political violence based on how online media is utilized. However, absent from much of this scholarship is an examination of how online government censorship affects political violence. Thus, this study examines how online government censorship affects domestic terrorism in 74 mixed and democratic regimes from varying regions and levels of development. In conducting a cross-national analysis from 2000 to 2019, the results indicate that online government censorship has an insignificant effect on domestic terrorism in democracies and a positive and significant effect on domestic terrorism in mixed regimes. In addition, a mediation analysis is employed, and the results indicate that online government censorship increases political polarization and domestic terrorism in mixed regimes. These findings have important implications in considering the effect that online government censorship has on political violence in different types of regimes worldwide.
Despite Indonesia's position as Southeast Asia's largest digital economy, systematic assessments of digital transformation at the subnational level—particularly in second-tier cities—remain remarkably scarce. This study addresses this gap by proposing and validating a triangulated diagnostic framework that integrates three internationally recognized measurement approaches: the International Monetary Fund's sectoral contribution model, the Asian Development Bank's input-output linkage analysis, and the Group of Twenty's policy enablers framework. Applied to Bandung, Indonesia's creative industry hub, we surveyed 170 micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) across five key sectors and conducted 10 follow-up semi-structured interviews to contextualize quantitative findings. Our findings reveal a systematic intra-firm digital divide: while 47.1% of MSMEs consistently use digital tools for marketing and payments, only 17.6% do so for human resources, 26.5% for production, and 14.7% for supply chain management. The IMF-based analysis shows the information and communication sector contributed 14.69% to Bandung's Gross Regional Domestic Product in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 14.28% from 2018 to 2023. However, ADB-based Leontief coefficients suggest reliance on imported digital inputs (estimated at IDR 3.99 trillion), indicating potential supply chain vulnerability. Ordered logistic regression reveals that undergraduate education is associated with back-office adoption (odds ratios 2.34–3.12, p < 0.01) but not front-office adoption. We introduce the concept of asymmetric digital adoption as an observable phenomenon requiring targeted policy interventions, though findings require validation across multiple second-tier cities. This study contributes a replicable methodology for city-level digital economy diagnosis across the Global South.
This study explores how the Trump administration's 2025 immigration reforms and protectionist trade policies have influenced labour markets and shaped public sentiment in the United States. Using 1483 YouTube comments, the research applies natural language processing methods, including sentiment analysis, topic modelling, and network analysis, to uncover public perceptions of immigration and tariff policies. Results reveal that most comments are neutral, though significant portions express scepticism and distrust of perceived policy inconsistencies, notably reflected in the viral expression “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out). Topic modelling identifies ten key themes, with the most prominent centred on crime, law enforcement, jobs and political institutions. Also, “immigration concerns” and “immigrants jobs” are perfectly and positively correlated at 1.0. Network analysis revealed a triadic concepts (“judges in political issues”, “Trump and cultural symbols”, and “crime and immigration concerns”) which are strongly linked to “immigrants jobs” and associated topics of concern. Together, these themes reveal that the public views immigration policies not only as economic decisions but also as reflections of political authority, national identity, and security priorities, which collectively influence perceptions of labour market disruption across the United States. A coordinated, evidence-based approach to immigration and trade is recommended to reduce labour disruptions, improve public trust, and prevent avoidable global tensions. The study contributes to broader debates on globalization backlash, political polarisation, and the role of online discourse in shaping public understanding of immigration and trade policy.
The study examines the impact of economic globalization on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in middle- and low-income countries in Asia over the period 2000–2023. Furthermore, this study investigates the moderating role of technological innovation in this relationship, which is one of its key contributions. As for the estimation, the research models are estimated using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method, whereas the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) and the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) are also employed to provide robustness evidence in the long run. The GMM results indicate that economic globalization has a positive impact on CO₂ emissions in middle- and low-income Asian countries. The robustness results obtained from the FMOLS and DOLS estimators, however, offer more long-run evidence suggesting the environmental effects of economic globalization become less detrimental to the environment when accompanied by cleaner technologies, higher production efficiency, and a transition toward sustainable energy systems. Besides, the results show that technological innovation acts as an important moderator in the relationship between globalization and CO₂ emissions, as it reduces the negative environmental impacts of globalization. This is a novel contribution of the study. Most importantly, the estimated coefficients of the control variables remain largely consistent across the GMM, FMOLS, and DOLS estimations, thereby providing additional support for the robustness and reliability of the empirical findings. Moreover, the results remain robust when alternative measures of economic globalization are employed, including the composite globalization index as well as the trade globalization and financial globalization indicators. Overall, the findings highlight that sustainable environmental outcomes in these countries can be achieved by promoting economic globalization, technological innovation, renewable energy transition, and cleaner production systems.
The paper re-evaluates India's export specialization in a dynamic and multidimensional context by jointly examining revealed comparative advantage, industry-level export growth, and relative global market size, thereby offering a more nuanced diagnosis of how Indian industries have evolved across different competitive regimes since the mid-2000s. It presents the first long-horizon, economy-wide application of a multidimensional quadrant model to India's HS two-digit export data, enabling a systematic assessment of sectoral transitions and structural changes that remain overlooked in traditional specialization analyses. The results indicate that a substantial share of India's export structure has been concentrated in static and domestically oriented industries, revealing persistent structural weaknesses despite the apparent benefits of specialization. While certain sectors display sustained specialization, their limited dynamism constrains long-term competitiveness. By explicitly linking empirical export patterns with the differentiated requirements of industrial policy, the study provides policy-relevant insights into the strategic trade-offs between specialization, diversification, and resilience. In doing so, the paper contributes to contemporary debates on export restructuring and structural transformation in emerging economies.
Purpose This study examines how consumer xenocentrism and ethnocentrism are associated with trust in foreign banking brands in an emerging-market context, with a particular focus on Colombia. It also analyzes whether perceived brand globalness conditions these relationships, thereby contributing to debates on global-local tensions in financial service consumption. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative research design was employed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze survey data collected from a convenience sample of 347 Colombian consumers. Participants were required to have prior experience with both domestic and foreign banking institutions. The analysis included Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses to establish the reliability and validity of the constructs. Findings The results indicate that xenocentrism is positively and significantly associated with trust in foreign banks, whereas ethnocentrism is negatively and significantly associated with trust. An exploratory multi-group analysis yielded indicative patterns consistent with a possible moderating role of perceived brand globalness: the positive association between xenocentrism and trust was stronger, and the negative association between ethnocentrism and trust was weaker, among respondents who perceived the foreign bank as global. However, because the subgroup sizes were highly unequal (n = 308 and n = 39), these findings are non-conclusive and should not be interpreted as confirmatory evidence of moderation. Originality/value This research advances the understanding of consumer trust in international banking by providing evidence of the distinct associations of xenocentrism and ethnocentrism with consumer trust. It emphasizes the strategic relevance of global brand positioning in emerging economies and offers practical insights for financial institutions seeking to navigate the balance between global appeal and local loyalty. The main structural model shows that ethnocentrism is negatively associated with trust in foreign banks. In addition, the exploratory multi-group analysis provides indicative, non-conclusive evidence that this negative association may be weaker when the bank is perceived as global. The study contributes to globalization research by showing that global brand appeal and local cultural resistance may coexist in emerging financial service markets.
This study examines how tax structure affects income inequality in developing countries, focusing on the relative shares of two major tax categories: taxes on goods and services (proxy for indirect taxes) and taxes on income, profits, and capital gains (proxy for direct taxes). Using an unbalanced panel of 59 developing countries over the period 1995 to 2021, we analyze the heterogeneous effects of these tax components on income inequality. The results show that indirect tax is positively associated with income inequality, and this inequality-enhancing effect is stronger in countries with higher levels of income inequality. In contrast, direct tax is negatively associated with income inequality on average. However, for countries with very low levels of income inequality, the effect of direct tax becomes positive, suggesting important distributional heterogeneity across country groups. We further examine the moderating role of economic globalization and find that globalization amplifies the inequality-reducing effect (i.e., makes less negative the impact) of direct tax, while it does not exert a statistically clear moderating effect on the relationship between indirect tax and income inequality. These findings highlight that the distributional consequences of tax structure in developing countries are context-dependent and shaped by both initial inequality conditions and external economic integration.
Youth development has emerged as a central concern in development policymaking, particularly in middle-income countries. Despite a growing body of literature on globalization and human well-being, empirical evidence on how the distinct dimensions of globalization affect youth-specific developmental outcomes in middle-income countries remains limited. This study examines the effects of the overall globalization index and its economic, political, and sociocultural dimensions on the Youth Progress Index (YPI) across 27 lower-middle-income and 29 upper-middle-income countries over the period 2011–2022. To this end, four dynamic panel data models are estimated using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). Per capita income, government expenditure on education, unemployment rate, and government effectiveness are included as control variables. The findings indicate that all dimensions of globalization exert a positive and statistically significant effect on the YPI in both country groups, though the magnitude of these effects varies. In lower-middle-income countries, the overall globalization index and political globalization carry the largest coefficients, whereas in upper-middle-income countries, the sociocultural dimension of globalization yields the highest estimated effect. Furthermore, per capita income, government expenditure on education, and government effectiveness are positively and significantly associated with youth progress, while the unemployment rate exerts a negative and significant effect in both country groups. These results suggest that the developmental benefits of globalization for youth are contingent upon national absorptive capacities and institutional quality. Accordingly, the study recommends strengthening institutional quality, investing in human capital development, and enhancing state capacity to translate the gains from globalization into inclusive opportunities.
This study examines how financial development shapes environmental degradation under uneven globalization, where cross-border capital flows, trade openness, energy-market interdependence, and heterogeneous institutional capacities jointly influence low-carbon transition. Although prior research has examined the finance–environment nexus, limited evidence explains how financial development affects emissions through energy-consumption channels across nonlinear thresholds and heterogeneous country contexts. Using a panel dataset of 82 emerging and advanced economies from 1990 to 2021, this study investigates the relationships among financial development, energy consumption, and CO₂ emissions by integrating Panel Threshold Regression, mediation analysis, causal machine learning, and explainable artificial intelligence. The results show that the environmental effect of financial development is regime dependent. At lower levels of financial development, financial deepening is associated with lower CO₂ emissions, whereas beyond estimated thresholds, further financial expansion is linked to higher carbon intensity. Energy consumption is identified as a key transmission channel through which financial development affects environmental degradation. Causal machine learning further reveals substantial heterogeneity, with stronger nonlinear effects in emerging economies and weaker associations in advanced economies. SHAP-based explainable AI confirms the relative importance of energy use and different dimensions of financial development in predicting emissions. These findings suggest that financial development alone does not automatically promote environmental sustainability under globalization; its effects depend on financial maturity, energy structure, institutional context, and countries' capacity to redirect globally integrated finance toward low-carbon transition.
The activation of temporary protection following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine enabled displaced Ukrainians to enter European labour markets rapidly. As temporary protection has been repeatedly extended and residence pathways increasingly linked to employment, assessing the quality of labour market integration has become essential. This article examines employment patterns, working conditions, and in-work poverty among Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia.Using a sequential exploratory mixed-methods design, Study 1 draws on a nationwide survey of 474 displaced Ukrainians to provide a descriptive overview of economic and occupational status, job precarity, and material deprivation among women and men. Study 2 builds on these findings through a thematic analysis of 15 in-depth interviews with Ukrainian single mothers facing intersecting vulnerabilities related to gender, refugee status, and caregiving responsibilities.The findings indicate that although labour market participation is high and economic status appears relatively stable, employment is frequently characterised by occupational downgrading and precarious working conditions. Paid work often fails to protect households from material deprivation, particularly in relation to housing costs and everyday consumption. Qualitative findings reveal a reinforcing cycle in which low-quality employment, care responsibilities, and time scarcity constrain opportunities for skill recovery and upward mobility, resulting in in-work poverty despite continuous employment.The article concludes that employment-centred integration under temporary protection facilitates rapid labour market entry but does not necessarily ensure economic security, or the conditions needed to reconcile paid work and family care. The Slovak case highlights the limits of employment as a stand-alone integration strategy under conditions of protracted displacement.
The rise of South-South cooperation has been widely celebrated as a pathway toward economic autonomy and development for countries in the Global South. In Africa, the Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) represents a landmark initiative aims at deepening intra-African trade and reducing dependence on external markets. However, questions remain as to whether such initiatives genuinely transform structural inequalities or merely reproduce existing patterns of dependency within a new framework. This paper critically examines AfCFTA through the lens of dependency theory, new regionalism, and global value chain analysis. It argues that while AfCFTA offers significant opportunities for economic integration and industrialization, its transformative potential remains constrained by structural asymmetries, weak institutional capacity, and Africa's embeddedness in global production networks. The study concludes that without deliberate policy interventions and institutional strengthening, South-South trade may risk reinforcing, rather than overcoming, structural dependency.
The relationship between the insurance sector and economic growth has received significant attention in the financial economics literature, but empirical results are still fragmented, methodologically diverse, and uneven across regions. This study systematically reviews global evidence regarding the interplay between insurance and economic growth, examining the underlying causes, methodologies employed, and regional disparities. Adhering to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we searched the Scopus database and identified 87 peer-reviewed studies published between 1996 and 2024. The results indicate that the relationship between insurance and economic development is context-dependent and heavily influenced by local institutions and financial systems. In advanced economies, there tends to be a two-way relationship, whereas in emerging markets, supply is generally the driver of growth. In addition, life insurance is generally more linked to economic growth than non-life insurance. Although methodological advancements from traditional time-series analyses to more sophisticated panel models, such as vector autoregression (VAR), the generalized method of moments (GMM), and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL), have improved causal inferences, the inconsistent application of quality standards and the lack of studies from Latin American and MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries limit the broader applicability of these findings. Future research should investigate non-linear relationships and institutional factors, employ robust validation methods, and incorporate innovations related to climate and insurance. Policymakers are encouraged to adopt differentiated strategies: enhancing financial access and regulatory frameworks in developing nations while fostering innovation and stability in established insurance markets.
This study examines how environmental governance shapes export performance in the context of economic globalization, drawing on subnational evidence from an export-oriented emerging economy. Using panel data from 63 Vietnamese provinces over the period 2018-2024, the study employs fixed-effects estimations, lagged specifications, and bootstrapped structural equation modeling (SEM) mediation analysis to evaluate both the direct effects of environmental governance on export performance and its indirect effects through innovation. The results indicate that stricter environmental governance is associated with weaker provincial export performance both directly and indirectly through reduced innovation activity. Bootstrapped mediation analysis confirms a partial mediation mechanism, indicating that compliance costs outweigh potential innovation-enhancing effects. These findings can be understood in light of structural constraints associated with global value chain (GVC) integration. In cost-sensitive, lower-value segments, limited upgrading opportunities and tight margins constrain the ability of firms to offset regulatory pressures through innovation. These findings challenge the universalist interpretation of the Porter hypothesis and instead point to a structurally conditioned crowding-out dynamic in emerging economies. More broadly, the results suggest that the economic effects of environmental governance are contingent on production structures, highlighting the uneven nature of globalization and the persistence of trade asymmetries across countries. By linking environmental governance, innovation, and export performance within a subnational framework, this study provides new evidence on how regulatory pressures interact with structural constraints to shape development outcomes in the global economy.
This paper asks whether the marginal returns to digital infrastructure for multidimensional financial inclusion are structurally consistent across developing economies. Drawing on an unbalanced panel of 57 economies over 2010-2023, we deploy a layered identification strategy that combines two-way fixed effects, lagged reducedform specifications, a dynamic lagged-dependent-variable model, and instrumental-variable estimation built on pre-sample baseline values interacted with a linear time trend. Three findings emerge. First, electricity access is a quantitatively dominant correlate of formal account ownership: a one-percentage-point gain in electrification is associated with a 0.62-percentage-point rise in account ownership. Second, the conversion of digital infrastructure into financial access varies systematically across regional blocs; the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) records the weakest net marginal effect on account ownership among African Regional Economic Communities, suggesting that infrastructure gains are absorbed by deeper physical, macroeconomic, and institutional frictions. Moderation analysis shows that stronger rule of law amplifies the contribution of digital connectivity to financial depth, while a composite Triple-Deficit Index dampens the internet-to-savings channel. Third, internet penetration delivers a stronger net effect on digital payments in ECCAS than in the East-Asian benchmark by approximately 88%, consistent with a compensatory leapfrogging pattern in which households substitute towards mobile-money rails in institutionally fragile environments. The findings are robust to the exclusion of East Asia, an alternative pooled non-East-Asia benchmark, survey-year-only re-estimation, the dynamic specification, instrumental-variable estimation, and panel quantile regression. Together, the results indicate that digital infrastructure supports financial inclusion most effectively when it is bundled with reliable electrification and credible institutional reform.
The unprecedented wave of Ukrainian refugees caused by the war placed the problem of refugee integration at the centre of demographic policy and scholarly debates. Therefore, there is a growing need to examine interconnections among economic participation, social inclusion, and access to social protection, which are commonly treated as dimensions of integration. This study examines the appropriate interplay among Ukrainian refugees across ten European host countries using aggregated 2024 data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Composite indices in each direction are developed to capture the integration dimensions, and their relationships are assessed using correlation and regression analyses, as well as typological comparisons. The findings indicate a strong positive association between economic integration and social protection (Pearson's r = 0.812, p < 0.01). In contrast, social integration shows no statistically significant association with either economic participation (r = -0.486, p = 0.155) or welfare engagement (r = -0.150, p = 0.680), suggesting that this dimension may operate independently of the other two at the country level. The typology of hosting countries, based on comparisons of economic integration and social protection indices, identifies four distinct integration types shaped by national institutional contexts. It is found that the "high-integration - high-protection" model prevails in half of the observed countries, in contrast to a low-capacity type of refugees' inclusion characterized by deficits in both economic inclusion and welfare access. The results do not support the assumption that reliance on welfare undermines labour market integration; rather, the macro-level data suggest that access to social protection co-occurs with higher economic participation.
The discovery of artemisinin by Tu Youyou and her team in the 1970s-a Nobel Prize-winning achievement rooted in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)-demonstrates that ancient medical knowledge can yield globally impactful therapeutics. Yet this success came at extraordinary cost: 200,000 compounds screened, hundreds of researchers across 60 institutions, and decades of clinical development. Today, advances in artificial intelligence (AI)-particularly large language models, multi-agent systems, and generative AI-could dramatically accelerate such discoveries. This technological acceleration brings profound legal challenges that technology alone cannot address. This study examines the synergy between AI intelligent agents and legal frameworks in shaping TCM modernization and internationalization. It analyzes how AI agents can overcome persistent barriers in knowledge systematization, predictive modeling, and personalized treatment support, while exploring the legal infrastructure necessary to govern these innovations. Drawing on China's Civil Code-specifically its provisions on intellectual property (Article 123), data rights (Articles 111 and 127), and tort liability (Articles 1202 and 1218)-and extending to consumer protection laws, anti-unfair competition regulations, comparative legal traditions (the French and German Civil Codes), and international instruments (the WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy, the TRIPS Agreement, and the WIPO Treaty on Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge), this study constructs a comprehensive legal framework for AI-driven TCM innovation. It further situates this convergence within the broader vision of a shared future for mankind and the Belt and Road Initiative, drawing on concrete examples such as China's dispatch of thousands of TCM practitioners to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and the establishment of the first Qihuang College in the Republic of Congo in 2025. The study concludes that the synergy between AI capabilities and robust legal protections represents a pivotal moment for TCM-one that can propel it from culturally specific heritage to a globally relevant, scientifically grounded, and legally protected component of future health systems.
In the context of increasing environmental concerns, the expansion of GVC is increasingly becoming an important factor in solving this issue. Our study investigates the heterogeneous causal impacts of GVC on climate vulnerability and examines how institutional quality moderates this relationship by using a global panel dataset of 57 countries from 2009 to 2018 with the IVQR to deal with both heterogeneity and endogeneity issues. The interesting findings show that GVC have significant negative heterogeneous causal impacts on climate vulnerability and these impacts are larger in more vulnerable countries. Besides, institutional quality is mentioned as an important moderating variable, amplifying the effects of GVC through improved governance, regulatory enforcement, and adaptive capacity. Therefore, some insightful policy implications are suggested to reduce climate vulnerability through promoting GVC participation as well as promoting institutional quality.
