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This study aims to examine the nexuses between economic growth, trade openness, renewable energy consumption and environmental degradation among organization of petroleum exporting countries (OPEC) members over the period 1990–2019.

The empirical strategy for the study includes dynamic heterogeneous panel pooled mean group (PMG), mean group (MG) estimators and dynamic panel threshold regression (TR) analysis. For clarity, PMG and MG are used to explore the long-run relationship between the variables, whereas TR is used to uncover the actionable and complementary policy thresholds in the nexuses between green growth and environmental degradation.

The empirical evidence is based on the significant estimates from PMG and TR. First, using PMG, the study finding revealed a long-run relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation via the PMG estimator. Second, using TR, the study revealed an actionable threshold for carbon dioxide emissions (CO₂) metrics tons per capita (mtpc) not beyond a critical mass of 4.88mtpc, and the complementary policy threshold of 85% of the share of trade to gross domestic product, respectively.

The policy relevance of the thresholds is apparent to policymakers in the cartel and for policy formulation. The policy implication of this study is straightforward.

The novelty of this study stalk in the extant literature on providing policymakers with an actionable threshold for CO₂ emissions with the corresponding complementary threshold for trade policies in the nexuses between green growth and the environment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate sustainable green economy in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1990–2019 using a quantile regression approach, considering the nexus between urbanization, economic growth, renewable energy, trade and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.

The study used a dynamic panel quantile regression to investigate the conditional distribution of CO₂ emissions along the turn-points of urbanization, economic growth, renewable energy, trade and the regressors via quadratic modeling specifications.

The main findings are established as follows. There is strong evidence of the Kuznets curve in the nexus between urbanization, economic growth, renewable energy, trade and CO₂ emissions, respectively. Second, urbanization thresholds that should not be exceeded for sustainability to reduce CO₂ emissions are 0.21%, and 2.70% for the 20th and 75th quantiles of the CO₂ emissions distribution. Third, growth thresholds of 3.64%, 3.84%, 4.01%, 4.36% and 5.87% across the quantiles of the CO₂ emissions distribution. Fourth, energy thresholds of 3.64%, 3.61%, 3.70%, 4.02% and 4.34% across the quantiles of the CO₂ emissions distribution. Fifth, trade thresholds of 3.37% and 4.47% for the 20th and median quantiles of the CO₂ emissions distribution, respectively.

The empirical shreds of evidence offer policy implications in such that building sustainable development and environment requires maintaining the critical mass, not beyond those insightful thresholds to achieving sustainable development and environmentally friendly SSA countries.

Sustainable cities and communities in an era of economic recovery path COVID-19 mitigate greenhouse gas. The policy relevance is of particular concern to the sustainable development goals.

The study is novel considering the extant literature by providing policymakers with avoidable thresholds for policy formulations and implementations in the nexus between urbanization, economic growth, renewable energy and trade openness.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the optimal inflation targets for an appropriate exchange rate policy in 15 major oil exporting countries in Sub-Saharan African (SSA).

Dynamic heterogeneous panel threshold techniques are used via threshold-effect test and threshold regression. This procedure is achieved through a grid search and bootstrapping replications method to stimulate the asymptotic distribution of the likelihood ratio test of the null hypothesis on no-threshold as against the alternative hypothesis. The p-values validate the threshold estimates.

Findings revealed that the optimal inflation target has a turning point and its impact on the real exchange rate is up to a threshold level of 14.47 per cent. Furthermore, the inflation rate above the threshold level overwhelmingly revealed its effect on real exchange regimes.

It would have been a good idea to investigate optimal inflation targets for all African countries but due to inadequate data the selection criteria was narrowed to oil-exporting countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Inflation targeting beyond the threshold level would have serious implications on the monetary policy.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to look at optimal inflation targets for 15 major oil exporting countries in general and SSA countries in particular. The findings provide a critical analysis of an inflation regime for a typical oil-producing country that oil exports being their source of revenue.

This article investigates the dynamic implication of healthcare expenditure on economic growth in the selected ten Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2000–2018.

The study methodology included dynamic heterogenous panel, using mean group and pooled mean group estimators. The investigation of the healthcare expenditure and economic growth nexus was achieved while controlling the effects of investment, savings, labor force and life expectancy via interaction terms.

The results from linear healthcare expenditure have a significant positive impact on economic growth, while the nonlinear estimates through the interaction terms between healthcare expenditure and investment have a negative statistically significant impact on growth. The marginal effect of healthcare expenditure evaluated at the minimum and maximum level of investment is positive, suggesting the impact of health expenditure on growth does not vary with the level of investments. This result responds to the primary objective of the article.

In policy terms, the impact of investment on healthcare is essential to addressing future health crises. The impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can never be separated from the shortages or low prioritization of health against other sectors of the economy. The article also provides an insight to policymakers on the demand for policy reform that will boost and make the health sector attractive to both domestic and foreign direct investment.

Given the vulnerability of SSA to the health crisis, there are limited studies to examine this phenomenon and first to address the needed investment priorities to the health sector infrastructure in SSA.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the asymmetric impact of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) on employees' wages via consumer prices in 15 major oil-exporting countries from sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1996-2017 using the panel threshold regression model.

The methodology used in this article was built on non-linear panel threshold regression models developed by Hansen (1996, 1999) threshold regression. The authors first tested for the existence of threshold-effect in ERPT and wage nexus using 1,000 bootstrap replications and 400 grid searches to obtain an optimal threshold. We also estimated that asymmetric ERPT on employees' wages reacts differently when the inflation-threshold exceeds beyond a 15.12% threshold level.

Our findings showed that asymmetric ERPT is incomplete and indicates that an increase by one standard deviation in real exchange rate causes a decline in employees' wages by 2.69%.

The policy implications of our results are drawn from the significant threshold estimates. However, a significant threshold value of 15.12 is an inflation-threshold estimates that split our 330 observations into the lower (upper) regimes. Further, an inflation rate beyond the threshold value is likely to have an asymmetric ERPT on employees' wages in the 15 major oil-exporting sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries.

The practical implication of the study is when ERPT exceeds the threshold, the effect of real exchange rate variations is passed on to employees' wages. It is widely believed that labor productivity increase with increased minimum wages. Nevertheless, there is contention as regards the effects on employment and poverty. As rising goods prices make the minimum wage increased homogeneous of degree zero.

Considerable increased ERPT on imported goods reduces employees' wages purchasing ability from import-dependent countries through import prices. Once it has documented, this also reduces welfare via deteriorations of marginal propensity to consume (MPC) and marginal propensity to savings (MPS).

This article integrates labor purchasing power into the analysis of ERPT using non-linear dynamic panel heterogeneous threshold regression. It extends the Hansen (1996, 1999) dynamic panel threshold models to exchange rate pass-through in SSA economies.