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The purpose of this paper is to examine the price level and volatility impacts of oil prices on energy mutual funds (EMFs). The authors also examine specific fund characteristics which might influence those interactions.

The authors test for volatility transmission between the oil prices and the funds in the sample. Later, the authors test to see which fund characteristics impact these volatility interactions.

The results show oil price movements lead majority of sample EMFs. The authors also find a volatility feedback relationship with most of the sample. Furthermore, the authors show the fund characteristics to be important indicators of these interactions. Morningstar rating, market capitalization and management tenure are found to be significant drivers of the relationships between EMFs and oil prices.

To the knowledge, there is not a study in literature which examines these relationships.

This paper aims to examine the impact of anti-discrimination references in trade agreements on gender equality measures in developing countries and provides estimates mostly covering the years 1991–2017.

This study gathers data from trade agreements, together with their related documents, to examine how the location and language of these references affect their enforceability and impact. Two types of references that aim to support gender equality are analyzed. They differ in their location within the documents and the language used.

The results indicate that such references are more likely to improve gender-related labor conditions when they appear in legally binding sections and are associated with hard modal verbs like “shall” or “should,” in contrast to those that appear in aspirational sections and are associated with softer modal verbs like “may” or “might”. Furthermore, the results highlight a significant effect of these references in the agriculture sector, which hosts most of the female labor force in developing countries.

This study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the impact of references to gender equality in trade agreements and connected documents on the share of female temporary employees, the share of female vulnerable employees, as well as the disparity between the share of female and the share of male salaried workers in developing countries. This research also fills a gap in the literature by providing empirical evidence on the impact of these references on the share of female employment in services, agriculture and industry sectors. It also extends the current understanding of the importance of the used language for these references and the location of the references (as a sign of legal bindingness) by studying two sets of gender-related references (references that bind and references that influence).

This paper aims to examine the interrelationships of monetary policy's structural shocks, the real exchange rate and stock prices.

According to quarterly data, variables such as gross domestic product, consumer price index, the real exchange rate, stock price and monetary policy indices in the structural vector autoregressions model are estimated. These variables' volatility is attributed to other variables’ structural shocks separately, and analysis of variance tables for all variables is presented.

The results show that structural shock on the exchange rate does not affect the stock price, but the monetary policy's structural shock positively impacts the real exchange rate. Moreover, the real exchange rate and monetary policy's structural shocks have a negative impact on the stock price index. However, no significant effect is found pertain to the real exchange rate structural shock, statistically.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study model is relatively novel in developing countries, and the study sought strength to develop knowledge on the subject of the study.

The study aims to explore the moderation effect of renewable energy consumption (REC) on the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and carbon emission (CO₂). Furthermore, the study investigates the prevalence of rebound effect in energy efficiency for the top five FDI inbound destinations in the Asia-Pacific region.

The study uses a balanced panel data set spanning from 1995 to 2020 obtained from the World Bank Database. This paper used feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) as the primary method, and to ensure the robustness of the findings, this paper used the panels corrected standard errors (PCSE) model.

The findings reveal a negative relationship between FDI and CO₂ emissions and REC and CO₂ emissions. However, the moderation effect of REC on the relationship between FDI inflows and CO₂ emissions is positive, suggesting that when both FDI and REC increase simultaneously, carbon emissions also increase. This study attributes the observed positive moderation effect to the phenomenon known as the rebound effect.

FDI fosters environmental sustainability. Regions’ FDI policies can be guidelines for other nations aiming for similar outcomes. REC reduces CO₂ emissions, underlining renewable energy’s efficacy. However, positive moderation effect of REC on the relationship between FDI and CO₂ emissions highlights the necessity for balanced policies to prevent unintended consequences like the rebound effect.

The originality of this study lies in examining the prevalence of rebound effect in energy efficiency. Prior empirical studies have explored the relationship between REC and carbon emission and established that increased efficiency in renewable energy creates positive environmental and climate externalities. However, it is constrained by rebound effects and this has been ignored by previous studies.

This paper aims to explore the extreme effect of crude oil price fluctuations and its volatility on the economic growth of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. It also investigates the asymmetric and dynamic relationship between oil price and economic growth. Further, a separate analysis for each MENA oil-export and oil-import countries is conducted. Furthermore, it studies to what extent the quality of institutions will change the effect of oil price fluctuations on economic growth.

As the effect of oil price fluctuations is not the same over different business cycles or oil price levels, the paper uses a panel quantile regression approach with other linear models such as fixed effects, random effects and panel generalized method of moments. The panel quantile methodology is an extension of traditional linear models and it has the advantage of exploring the relationship over the different quantiles of the whole distribution.

The paper can summarize results as following: changes in oil price and its volatility have an opposite effect for each oil-export and oil-import countries; for the former, changes in oil prices have a positive impact but the volatility a negative effect. While for the latter, changes in oil prices have a negative effect but volatility a positive effect. Further, the impact of oil price changes and their uncertainty are different across different quantiles. Furthermore, there is evidence about the asymmetric effect of the oil price changes on economic growth. Finally, accounting for institutional quality led to a reduction in the impact of oil price changes on economic growth.

The study concludes more detailed results on the impact of oil prices on gross domestic product growth. Thus, it can be used as a decision-support tool for policymakers.