This study proposes a framework and a process promoting creation of sustainable jobs and businesses in rural, arid and semi-arid agricultural conflict zones of Sub Saharan Africa, focusing on Somalia's societal stabilization and conflict mitigation. This task requires developing risk-reducing measures for infrastructure and service delivery in rural, post-conflict zones. Literature reviews identified two economic growth theories rooted in sustainability concepts for localized, pro-poor development. Ecological Economics Theory (EET) and Endogenous Growth Theory (EGT) are the philosophical bases establishing investment priorities. Additional research regarding Somali culture, key conflict factors, and potential business opportunities, provides an understanding of salient facts in Somalia's on-going, 27-years of war and potential culturally acceptable development pathways. Informal sources, Somali and non-Somali, were consulted to further identify and verify potential avenues for economic growth, sustainability, educational opportunities, allowing Somalia to emerge from the strife it has endured. Visits to Somalia and Somaliland confirmed that livestock, its products and related requirements, are key components for economic growth and job creation. Investigation, via pilot testing and case studies, was undertaken of technologies with potential to improve productive capacity and disrupt existing value chains. Initial framework elements were evaluated for job and business creation, through unstructured, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaire of Somali officials, and Somali and non-Somali conflict zone development practitioners. The pilot test used a small sample size and is a limitation of this work. Findings from the literature review, informal discussions, and the pilot test are synthesized into the framework presented in Chapter 5. The framework proposes development of an innovative, disruptive, and scalable business model that facilitates the simultaneous implementation of renewable energy production. It targets education for the livestock and agroforestry industry of Somalia, improving job and business opportunities. The model proposes modification of used shipping containers for the creation of modular elements, to satisfying infrastructural building components to initiate skills practice, job, and business growth. / Doctor of Philosophy / The wars and conflicts of various types in Africa have made the continent poorer and prevented development in many countries. One of the major, and seemingly intractable conflict locations, is Somalia located in the East Horn of Africa (EHA). This research provides an understanding of salient facts in Somalia's 27 years of war by examining culture and key conflict factors. The objective of this assessment is to identify potential culturally acceptable pathways that will lead to business opportunities and development as a means of conflict mitigation. The improvement of job opportunities for youth is viewed as a means to offset the current participation in the ongoing conflict. Somali and non-Somali sources were consulted to identify and verify avenues for economic growth, sustainability, and educational opportunities. Visits to Somalia and Somaliland confirmed that livestock, and related products, are key components for development and job creation. Technologies with potential to improve productive capacity and disrupt existing value chains were also evaluated. Findings from informal discussions and a pilot test of a proposed framework are presented. The framework identifies elements for development of an innovative, disruptive, and scalable business model that facilitates the implementation of renewable energy production. In addition, it targets education for the livestock and agroforestry industries, improving job and business opportunities.

The global pandemic Covid-19 caused an inevitable impact on economic growth and public health. Policymakers were forced to opt for the zero or the non-zero strategy to ease the economic effects and stop the spreading of infection. Previous literature on the matter strikingly agreed that the zero strategy was optimal. This paper’s primary purpose is to analyse the impact of zero and non-zero strategies on economic growth by comparing the members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The empirical methodology utilised in this paper constitutes the traditional Difference in Difference (DiD) design in a two-way fixed effects framework. The dataset contained 38 OECD member countries during the period 2015 to 2021. The countries were assigned to a treatment group and a control group based on the chosen strategy. The main results contradict previous literature and presented a significant and negative relationship between the zero strategy and gross domestic product per capita growth. In the case of future global pandemics, these findings can facilitate the choice of action aiming to mitigate the economic effects.

Greenhouse Gas emission increase is largely attributed to carbon dioxide emissions as the major gas causing climate change and atmospheric warming. According to Environmental Kuznets Curve Theory (EKC), the increase in economic growth is expected to reduce the environmental pollution from carbon dioxide emission caused at the beginning stages of economic growth. In this thesis, I examined the impact of economic growth on carbon dioxide emission. The key hypothesis tested in this study is the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis. Data from 1967 to 2016 from over 15 countries in North and South America, published by the World Bank were used. Since EKC posits a non-linear relationship between economic growth (GDP/capita) and Carbon dioxide emission, I used a quadratic component in the regression model. I analyzed the data using the OLS regression as my baseline model. Each country is unique in many respects that are hard to capture by a set of variables in econometrics model. This poses a challenge to estimating an unbiased estimate. Using panel data model allowed controlling for time invariant unobserved country-specific factors that could bias the estimates. I estimated a fixed effect panel regression to examine the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth is primarily measured with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. The results of the fixed effect panel regression showed that all variables are significant, except export and inflation which were not significant. OLS could not solve the issue of heterogeneity among the variables. Estimating country-specific fixed effects model eliminates unobserved heterogeneity across countries and, therefore provides relatively unbiased estimates compared to OLS estimates. The positive correlation between Total CO2 emissions, CO2 emissions from Solid, and CO2 emissions from gas and GDP per capita suggests that carbon dioxide emissions increase as GDP/ capita increases before the turning point. The negative correlation between Total CO2 emissions, CO2 emissions from Solid, and CO2 emissions from gas and GDP per capita squared suggests that there is a polynomial (quadratic) form which is like that of inverted U-shape of the EKC curve. The coefficient, although it is very small, suggests the impact of the negative relationship after the turning point at the vertex of EKC curve is fractional. As expected, the result indicates a higher population causes an increase in total CO2 emissions. The result from CO2 emissions from liquid shows a negative relationship between the dependent variable CO2 emissions from liquid and the independent variable GDP per capita at the highest level of significance. This result is different from that of total carbon dioxide emissions, CO2 emissions from Solid, and CO2 emissions from gas. Carbon emission from liquid looks different from carbon emissions from solid and gas. There are high and constant emission throughout all the years and in all countries used in the analysis. EKC hypothesis is proven to be true for total carbon dioxide emissions, carbon dioxide emission from solid and gas. The hypothesized correlation between GDPs per capita square and CO2 emissions is statistically supported for Total CO2 emission, CO2 emission from solid and CO2 emission from gas. CO2 emissions from Solid, and CO2 emissions from gas and GDP per capita squared suggest that there is a polynomial (quadratic) form which is like that of inverted U-shape of the EKC curve. This proves that EKC model is proven to be true for my data. Policies like population policies can help in increasing growth in GDP per capita and reducing growth in the amount of carbon dioxide emissions. Population policies could play a significant role aimed at mitigating and reducing climate change.

This study examines the relationship between banks, stock market and economic development in Botswana using quarterly data from 1995 to 2016. To find out if there is a link between financial development and economic growth, the three measures of stock market development used are stock market capitalization, total value of shares traded and turnover. For bank-based financial development, the proxy is bank credit to private sector and the measure of economic growth is real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. To analyse the long run and short run relationships among the variables of interest, this study implements the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) cointegration technique and the Granger causality technique to find the direction of causality. The findings indicate that there is a positive short and long run relationship between stock market variables and economic growth when turnover and market capitalization are used as proxies and value traded is significant and negatively related to economic growth. The study found that bank credit to private sector is negatively related to economic growth both in the short and the long run. There is bidirectional causality between stock market financial development and economic growth and no causal relationship between banking financial development and economic growth in Botswana. This study recommends that there should be appropriate reforms to develop the financial sector in Botswana to help promote economic growth. Botswana should also have reforms to promote economic growth to foster stock market financial development. This study also offers a comprehensive and detailed overview of the state of the economy, banking system and the financial markets system of Botswana which can help foreign investors as well as individual and institutional investors in making sound investment decisions.

The dissertation consists of three chapters examining U.S. public firms' innovation and patenting activities and their relationship with patent policy and economic growth. In the first chapter, I empirically study the effect of patent publications on firm-level innovation and patenting. Previous works have studied the effect of patent monopoly rights and knowledge disclosure on innovations. The proposed chapter supplements these studies by analyzing the disincentive effect of patent publications on firm innovations through costly knowledge disclosure. Exploiting the American Inventors’ Protection Act of 1999 as a natural experiment that shortened the time it took for patents to get published, I show the negative effect of earlier patent publications on manufacturing firms' patenting and innovation activities. The benchmark analysis shows that the average decline of 10 months in patent publication lag resulted in 13 percentage points lower firm-level patent growth rate during 2001-2005. In the second chapter, I build an endogenous growth model with a patent system. By modeling patenting decisions endogenously, I also introduce patent protection and information disclosure mechanisms through patents. Traditional innovation and growth models assume that innovators patent whenever they innovate and consider patenting and innovating as the same. However, this assumption is no longer innocuous if patenting has an implicit cost to the innovator e.g., the cost of disclosing valuable information. Therefore, to analyze the impact of the patent system’s disclosure mechanism on firm innovation, one must at a minimum work with a model distinguishing between the two concepts. Using my model, I show that a higher patent disclosure policy reduces firm patenting intensity as firms strategically opt out of patenting. In the absence of patents, there is less knowledge diffusion in the economy, which leads to less industry competition and growth. The third chapter studies the effect of firms' ability to build on their previous innovation on firm growth. While innovating, firms can either develop fully novel exploratory ideas or exploit their existing ideas. Using firm patent data, I document that U.S. manufacturing firms' innovation became more exploitative and that their patent growth rate simultaneously declined after 2000. To rationalize these changes in firm innovation, I build a firm-level endogenous growth model with both initial exploratory and subsequent exploitative innovations. Estimating my model using 1990-2000 microdata, I show that a decline in the usefulness of exploratory innovations as a foundation for future exploitation can match a shift in the composition of innovation we saw over this period, resulting in a 0.8 percentage point decline in firm average growth and a 9% decline in firm market value post-2000.

This thesis investigates the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and the link between carbon emissions, energy use and economic growth in the BRICS countries within 1980-2013. The reason for analysing a sample of energy-intensive developing countries (the BRICS) is that these nations are of major concern for the global environmental challenge. The results of panel cointegration relationship estimation do not support the EKC. The estimated elasticity of carbon dioxide emissions to energy use is 0.60%, while the elasticity of economic growth to energy consumption is 1.74%. Moreover, the causality tests indicate that energy use Granger-causes carbon emissions, while economic growth, in turn, Granger-causes energy use. This thesis adds to the existing literature and can have policy relevance for the BRICS countries. Based on the results of this study, the overall recommendation is to prioritize increase in energy efficiency through technological development and use of cleaner resources of production.

Research question: How can B2B companies achieve sustainable business models by implementing SDG 8? Purpose: The main purpose of this research paper is to contribute to the understudied areas within sustainable development. The paper wishes to carry this out by looking into the ways in which business-to-business companies can achieve sustainable business models. The paper aims to study the achievement of sustainable business models via the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 8. Method: An abductive approach was adopted in thematic analysis, starting with data collection from observations and interviews and subsequently identifying emerging codes to establish connections between different data sources. In our exploratory multiple case study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with managers from three B2B companies to address our research question. Conclusion: With the help of prior research and theoretical literature within the field of study, the research conducted presented a number of interesting findings. The study found evidence to suggest that the achievement of sustainable business models is dependent on the inclusion of socio-environmental values into the business model of a company

Sustainable economic growth is vital to reduce poverty and a challenge to development. To aim and maintain a greater level of economic growth that will assist African countries in reducing poverty, they must investigate the specific determinants of economic growth. In this paper, we determine the impact of economic freedom, political freedom, and foreign direct investment on the gross domestic product. The gross domestic product was observed over a nine year-time period on a sample of 38 low-income and upper-income countries in Africa.

The objective of this research concerns identifying whether or not there is a relationship between oil price increases in a given quarter and the likelihood of a recession in the subsequent quarter. The data used is gathered from the St. Louis Fed's Fred II, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Energy Information Administration to generate modified variables. These variables are tested using a qualitative dependent variable, recession, in a binary choice model. The findings validated the assumption that oil prices do have a correlation with recessions, and that the relationship is a direct one. Based on the model, an increase in the price of oil will positively affect the likelihood of a "recession" outcome versus the alternative, "no recession". It is anticipated that the results will inspire future research into the causes and effects of oil price surges, as well as the determinants of economic contractions in the future based on policy decisions and economic decision-making practices in the present.

In order to provide enough economic growth so that the majority of individuals within the jurisdiction are satisfied with government services, state governments typically pursue two budgetary choices for economic growth: overall increased production and stabilization (Bivens, 2014). According to two budgetary choices as a path to economic growth, this research investigates the relationship between capital expenditure or savings and economic growth. It covers the years 1990 through 2013 and uses a paneled data set at the state level in the United States. The first model for this study is the structural equation model (SEM), which examines the direct and indirect effects of capital expenditure and state government savings on economic growth by including the volatility of the total expenditure as a mediating factor. Then, this dissertation investigates the relationships among capital expenditures, the total expenditure volatility and savings by using the endogenous growth or the OLS regression model. This dissertation can conclude that both of the two budgetary choices for state governments are effective for economic growth. Under controlling state characteristics, they are positively related to economic growth, which supports the allocation role of government for economic growth. However, this study finds that state governments do not find any supportive evidence on the fact that they can attain the stabilization role of government for economic growth. Even though they spend money on savings or capital expenditure from Keynesian macroeconomic theory, it does not lead to budgetary stabilization of the total expenditure. Thus, this dissertation leaves the missing links of the relationship between both fiscal policies and volatility inconclusive while it supports that volatility can negatively affect economic growth.