Improving Entrepreneurship In Nigerias Emerging Economy

Employment is a cure for unemployment and its attendant vices like armed robbery, corruption, forgery, internet fraud, and drug trafficking. An “idle mind is the devil’s workshop”, so says a popular adage. There is increasing unemployment due to too much emphasis on liberal education devoid of vocational and entrepreneurship education and increasing population. Although Nigerian governments try to promote entrepreneurship by making policies regarding funding of businesses, providing enabling infrastructure, implementation of the policies is nothing to write home about because corruption has led to the abandonment of contracts on electricity supply and means of transportation. If the government is to achieve its dream of making Nigeria one of the 20 greatest economies of the world, it should improve electricity, road and railway transportation systems, security, and  reduce the cost of communication and entrepreneurship development which is newly introduced at all levels of its educational system

The Third Millennium Secretary And Information & Communication Technology: Nigerian Experience

The academic qualifications, routine duties, role responsibilities, office equipment and personal attributes of traditional secretary form the basics for the study of the third millennium secretary. Although some of the personal and business attributes of the traditional secretary may appear old, some of them are still relevant in the workplace today. For example, both traditional secretary and the third millennium secretary still carry out routine duties of typing, handling telephone calls, etc., but the third millennium secretary carries out management activities which were hitherto reserved for only the executive. The third millennium secretary is better trained, uses modern technology, manages both human and non-human resources more efficiently, and is better at public relations and communication skills

Energy transition and environmental quality prospects in leading emerging economies : The role of environmental-related technological innovation

The world has witnessed a significant rise in greenhouse gas emissions since the end of the 20th century as several economies begin to emerge into industrial hubs and manufacturing giants across the globe. Thus, in the wake of global interest in clean energy development and campaign for sustainable climate and ecosystem, the role of the emerging countries in the debate is unarguably vital and demanding. Importantly, this study seeks to examine the commitment of the leading emerging countries (E7) of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Turkey to energy transition and carbon-neutral 2050. We employ the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag approach that accounts for potential country-specific factors to examine the role of environmental-related technological innovations (ERT) in achieving climate neutrality in the E7 over the period from 1992 to 2018. Notably, the findings revealed that a 1 percent increase in ERT yields ~0.33% (short-run) and ~ 0.17% (long-run) reductions in carbon emission, thus suggesting that the E7 economies could be heading toward environmental sustainability with the application of ERT. Additionally, the result revealed that the application of ERT in the energy utilization profile significantly reduced the undesirable impact of primary energy utilization. However, the result showed that such an impact is not enough to trigger a transition to environmentally desirable cleaner energy that could mitigate carbon emissions. This is because the larger share of the E7 countries' primary energy utilization is from conventional and/or non-renewable energy sources. The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is also validated.© 2022 The Authors. Sustainable Development published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Do natural resources and economic components exhibit differential quantile environmental effects?

In view of the resource curse assumption, the environmen-tal aspects of resource utilization are arguably posing moredangers to human existence. In the Middle East and NorthAfrica (MENA) region, the region that holds more than 60%and 50% of the world's oil and gas reserves respectively,the need to examine the contribution of natural resourcesto environmental quality among other factors cannot beoveremphasized. By leveraging on the novelty of observingthe differential impact of natural resources and other eco-nomic components such as income and primary energy utili-zations across the quantiles of carbon emission, this studyimplements the quantile regression approach alongsideother relevant techniques to analyze data between 1990and 2018 for selected countries in the MENA region includ-ing Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Algeria, Morocco,Oman, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Theresult posits that natural resource utilization generally ham-pers the environment across the quantiles. However, thisnegative effect decreases until the 50th quantile beforestarting to rise again toward the upper quantiles. Addition-ally, primary energy utilization and globalization respectivelyworsen and improve environmental quantile, especiallytoward the upper quantiles while income affirms the inverted U-shaped hypothesis across the entire quantiles.Moreover, there is a statistically significant one-way direc-tional causality from natural resources, economic expansion,primary energy use, and globalization to carbon emissionlevels. Hence, the study offers environmentally friendlyresource utilization policies to the MENA economies andother resource-rich states by extension.publishedVersio

The role of alternative energy and globalization in decarbonization prospects of the oil-producing African economies

This study assesses the environmental impacts of the energy mix of mainly oil-producing African nations. The economic aspects of decarbonization prospects were also viewed from the perspectives of fossil energy dependence among the countries. More insights on the impacts of energy mix on decarbonization prospects were also provided on a country-specifc analysis basis via the application of second-generation econometric techniques in assessing carbon emission levels across the countries between 1990 and 2015. From the results, only renewable resources proved to be a signifcant decarbonization tool among the understudied oil-rich economies. Moreover, the consequences of the trio of fossil fuel consumption, income growth, and globalization are diametrically opposed to achieving decarbonization as the rise in their usage signifcantly acts as pollutant-inducing tools. The validity of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) conjecture was also upheld for the combined analysis of the panel countries. The study thus opined that the reduction in conventional energy dependence will enhance environmental quality. Consequently, given the advantages of the geographical locations of these countries in Africa, concerted strategies for more investment in clean renewable energy sources like solar and wind were suggested to policymakers among other recommendations.publishedVersio

Examining the dynamics of ecological footprint in China with spectral Granger causality and quantile-on-quantile approaches

With 2.5 global hectares (gha) per capita against 2.7 gha per capita, China’s ecological footprint is desirably below the world’s average ecological footprint per capita. Undesirably, the country’s per person ecological footprint outweighs the world’s average biocapacity per person of 1.7 gha, thus signifying an enormous pressure on the country’s ecological capacity. This reason accounts for the motivation to explore the dynamics of ecological footprint for China over the period 1971–2016 by employing a series of empirical techniques that include quantile-on-quantile regression (QQR), spectral Granger causality (SGC), and quantile regression. Indicatively, the empirical findings are in folds. First, from the QQR, economic growth exerts a positive effect on (i) ecological footprint especially in the middle quantile (0.4–0.7) and (ii) all quantiles (0.01–0.95) of economic growth. Second, both fossil fuel and primary energy utilization exert a positive impact on (i) all quantiles (0.01–0.95) of ecological footprint and (ii) all quantiles (0.01–0.95) of the two energy profiles. Third, it is surprising to see renewable energy utilization exerting a positive effect on ecological footprint at the lower tail (0.1–0.40) and on renewable energy use at the higher tail (0.70–0.95). Additionally, the SGC result revealed Granger causality from primary energy use and economic growth to the ecological footprint in the long-run without reverse. Additionally, without reverse, there is a Granger causality from renewable energy use to the ecological footprint in the short-, medium-, and long-term. Importantly, the overall policy implication suggests a more drastic decoupling of the country’s growth from the supply side (ecological pressure and environmental deprivation).© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Assessing the drivers of (non)conventional energy portfolios in the South Asian economies : The role of technological innovation and human development

Energy is a vital component of economic development process, but part of the energy system including production and consumption of non-renewable energy sources largely constitute environment setback. Interestingly, this research contributes to the growing debate on understanding the factors contributing to energy consumption portfolios using the case of five major South Asian economies including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan from 1990 to 2018. Crucial factors like trade flow, human development index, technological innovations, and urbanization were controlled for while examining the roles of economic expansion on the disaggregated energy consumption portfolios (renewable and non-renewable energy sources) of these countries. The empirical dissection revealed that economic growth and the duo of trade and innovation are inimical to environmental sustainability as they trigger nonrenewable energy consumption while suppressing cleaner energy usage in the South Asian bloc. Urbanization on the other hand shows significant simultaneous positive impacts on the consumption of both renewables and nonrenewable energy, but its impacts are more pronounced on the latter than the former. Lastly, the study posits that human development and urbanization are major drivers of clean energy among the countries. Thus, strategic investment plans for human development enhancements and greener urban infrastructures are recommended for environmental sustainability goals in the region.© 2023 The Authors. Sustainable Development published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Does it take international integration of natural resources to ascend the ladder of environmental quality in the newly industrialized countries?

Among the new revelation in the natural resources-environment and climate change nexus literature is the criticality of ascending the environmental sustainability ladders of the industrialized economies such as the newly industrialized countries (NICs). This study considers the panel of top ten NICs (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Malaysia, Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, Indonesia, and Thailand) by utilizing the novel Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) and other approaches including the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FM-OLS), Dynamic Ordinary Least Square (D-OLS), and the Fixed-effects Ordinary Least Square (FE-OLS) to analyze the related dataset between 1990 and 2018. The combined empirical approaches help to measure the countries’ drive for carbon neutrality. With a startling and unanimous evidence from the employed empirical techniques, natural resource rent is detrimental to the global goal carbon neutrality in the examined panel countries. However, there is a significant relieve that is brought about when globalization moderate the effect of natural resource rent on carbon emission. Another favorable outlook from the study is that economic growth and environmental nexus yields the affirmative validity of environmental Kuznets curve while renewable energy utilization and globalization independently promotes environmental quality in the examined panel countries. Therefore, the result from the study favours a more relaxed border to allow international integration of economic and financial aspects especially for the natural resources-related and environmental-friendly goods and services.© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Achieving carbon neutrality in post COP26 in BRICS, MINT, and G7 economies: The role of financial development and governance indicators

Pledges and commitments from governments of wealthy nations were made at the COP26 Glasgow summit, thereby rejuvenating hope among nations to confront the climate change challenge. Thus, the study examines the complementarity of financial development and carbon emissions, while accounting for the conditional influence of good governance under three disaggregated indicators – economic, institutional, and political governance for the BRICS, MINT, and the G7 economies. First, the study reveals that financial development depending on the adopted indicator has mixed effects on environmental pollution levels. Specifically, financial development triggers the highest pollution effect via domestic credit to the private sector compared to foreign direct investments, while financial development index reduces environmental pollution. Secondly, economic governance promotes environmental quality by reducing environmental pollution through quality regulation. Third, institutional governance through weaker rule of laws induces pollution, while the control of corruption antagonizes pollution levels. Furthermore, only the voice of accountability supports the pollution-mitigating effect of political governance. On a bloc-to-bloc comparative analysis, governance effectiveness promotes environmental pollution in all the three economic blocs albeit at different magnitudes while the voice of accountability exerts a significant desirable impact on pollution only in the G7 countries. Lastly, renewable energy and trade liberalization exerts a negative and positive influence on environmental degradation respectively.publishedVersio

Evaluating Supply Resilience Performance of an Automotive Industry during Operational Shocks: A Pythagorean Fuzzy AHP-VIKOR-Based Approach

An integral aspect of global businesses and economic activities is the supply chain networks. Importantly, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic scenario has further shown that the outbreak of diseases can create a global network-scale disruption to supply chain or logistics, thereby damaging several aspects of economic activities and business life. Hence, this study aims to assess the resilient supplier selection (RSS) process in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. A two-stage hybrid decision model using Pythagorean fuzzy sets was proposed as a case study from the automotive industry to deal with RSS during the COVID-19 outbreak. In the first stage, significant criteria and their corresponding sub-criteria were determined through a vast review of the literature and nominal group technique, while the relative weights for RSS were obtained through the Pythagorean Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (PFAHP) method. In the second stage, nine suppliers were evaluated with Pythagorean Fuzzy VIKOR (PFVIKOR) method. The results of the hybrid approach revealed that flexibility is the most important criterion among resilience criteria that constitute the most significant dimensions for RSS. In many studies, strategic criteria such as quality, cost, and delivery are found to be the most important criteria in supplier selection, however, in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, the opinions of decision-makers were significantly changed as the present study reveals that flexibility is the most important criterion to improve the operations of the supply chain for RSS. Next to flexibility is process capabilities, while quality (Q), and cost (C) existed as the first and second in the category of influential criteria for strategic supplier selection criteria, respectively. The managerial and practical implication is that, in the wake of COVID-19 disruptions, suppliers need to be re-evaluated based on resilience-related indicators