Green aid, aid fragmentation and carbon emissions.

The existing studies that examined the green aid effectiveness in reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions found mixed results; however, neither of these studies considered the role of aid fragmentation in the effectiveness of green aid flows. By using the dynamic panel generalized method of moments (GMM) methodology to panel data of 92 countries covering the period between 2002 and 2018, this study examines the impact of green aid fragmentation on the effectiveness of green aid flows in reducing CO2 emissions. Using different fragmentation measures, this paper finds that green aid fragmentation is detrimental to the effectiveness of green aid flows in reducing CO2 emissions per capita.

How do foreign direct investment flows affect carbon emissions in BRICS countries? Revisiting the pollution haven hypothesis using bilateral FDI flows from OECD to BRICS countries.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) flows from developed to developing countries may increase carbon emissions in developing countries as developing countries are seen as pollution havens due to their lenient environmental regulations. On the other hand, FDI flows from the developed world may improve management practices and advanced technologies in developing countries, and an increase in FDI flows reduces carbon emissions. Most of the existing studies examine the relationship between FDI flows and carbon emissions by using aggregate FDI flows; however, this paper contributes to the literature by analyzing the impact of FDI flows on carbon emissions in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) between 1993 and 2012 using bilateral FDI flows from eleven OECD countries.

Stochastic dominance spanning and augmenting the human development index with institutional quality.

Unlabelled: The well-known Human Development Index (HDI) goes beyond a single measure of well-being as it is constructed as a composite index of achievements in education, income, and health dimensions. However, it is argued that the above dimensions do not reflect the overall well-being, and new indicators should be included in its construction. This paper uses stochastic dominance spanning to test the inclusion of additional institutional quality (governance) dimensions to the HDI, and we examine whether the augmentation of the original set of welfare dimensions by an additional component leads to distributional welfare gains or losses or neither.

Sensitivity of environmental performance index based on stochastic dominance.

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) is a popular sustainability index. It is a composite index which ranks 180 countries based on their environmental performance in 32 indicators. Using the EPI data and stochastic dominance efficiency methodology, this paper examines the sensitivity to the subjective weights assigned to the indicators and categories of environmental performance.

The environmental Kuznets curve for Turkish provinces: a spatial panel data approach.

This paper aims to test the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis using SO2 measurements in Turkish provinces between 2004 and 2019. The existing studies concerning the EKC hypothesis for Turkey either use a country-level analysis or panel data techniques covering provincial data that do not account for the spatial dimension. To account for the spatial dependence and overcome the biases resulting from the existence of such spatial spillovers, this paper combines the traditional panel data methodology with the recent advances in spatial econometrics.

Ontogeny of inter-alpha inhibitor protein (IAIP) expression in human brain.

Inter-alpha inhibitor proteins (IAIPs) are naturally occurring immunomodulatory molecules found in most tissues. We have reported ontogenic changes in the expression of IAIPs in brain during development in sheep and abundant expression of IAIPs in fetal and neonatal rodent brain in a variety of cellular types and brain regions. Although a few studies identified bikunin, light chain of IAIPs, in adult human brain, the presence of the complete endogenous IAIP protein complex has not been reported in human brain.

Quantile forecast combination using stochastic dominance.

This paper derives optimal forecast combinations based on stochastic dominance efficiency (SDE) analysis with differential forecast weights for different quantiles of forecast error distribution. For the optimal forecast combination, SDE will minimize the cumulative density functions of the levels of loss at different quantiles of the forecast error distribution by combining different time-series model-based forecasts. Using two exchange rate series on weekly data for the Japanese yen/US dollar and US dollar/Great Britain pound, we find that the optimal forecast combinations with SDE weights perform better than different forecast selection and combination methods for the majority of the cases at different quantiles of the error distribution.