This study investigated the relationship between telecommunications development, trade openness and economic growth in South Africa. It determined explicitly if telecommunications development and trade openness directly impact economic growth or whether telecommunications strengthen or weaken the link between trade openness and economic growth using the ARDL bounds test methodology. The findings reveal that both telecommunications development indicators and trade openness significantly and positively impact South Africa’s GDP in the short and long terms. The study also found that control variables like internet usage and gross fixed capital formation significantly and positively influence GDP. Conversely, inflation was found to consistently affect GDP negatively and significantly. The findings from the ARDL cointegration analysis affirm a long-run economic relationship between the independent variables and GDP. The study also established that telecommunications development slightly distorts trade in the foreign trade-GDP nexus in South Africa. Despite this, the negative interaction effect is not substantial enough to overshadow the positive impact of trade openness on economic growth. From a policy perspective, the study recommends that South African policymakers prioritise enhancing local goods’ competitiveness in global markets and reducing trade barriers. It also advocates for improving the accessibility and affordability of telecommunications technologies to foster economic development.

Creating products and services that satisfy individual and community needs is impossible without raw materials. This study takes a novel approach by integrating the economic dynamics and raw material consumption indicators of the European Union (EU). The study uses different econometric methods to analyze the relationship between GDP (gross domestic product) and the EU’s raw material consumption (RMC) from 2014–2023. Among the results, the panel data analysis model shows that the resource productivity of the EU improved during the period under review, whereas the material intensity decreased significantly. These trends significantly contributed to the relative decoupling of material consumption from GDP in the last decade. The results of the K-means cluster analysis highlight the regional economic differences within the EU. According to the results of the correlation analysis, EU member countries differ significantly in the efficiency of raw material use. Nevertheless, five member countries are robustly vulnerable to large-scale raw material use. The divergence calculation results show that while some countries use raw materials extremely efficiently to produce GDP, others achieve low efficiency. This unique approach and the resulting findings provide a new perspective on the complex relationship between economic growth and raw material use in the EU.

This study seeks to explore the information value of financial metrics on corporate sustainability and investigate the moderating effects of institutional shareholders on the association between net cashflows (NCF) and corporate sustainability of the leading ASEAN countries. The dataset consists of companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore during 2013–2023. Fixed effects panel regression is executed in this study. Subsequently, the conditional effects served to evaluate the influence of institutional shareholders on the association between NCF and corporate sustainability. This study employs agency theory to explore how the alignment of institutional shareholders influences sustainability outcomes. This study found that institutional shareholders themselves supply information for the sustainability indicator in Thailand and Singapore, but not in Malaysia. Furthermore, adversely correlated with sustainability metrics in all three nations is the interaction term between institutional shareholders and net cashflows. Further investigation reveals that for each nation’s sustainability measures the institutional shareholders offer value relevant to net cashflows at certain amounts. This study not only contributes to existing academic research on sustainability and financial indicators, it also provides practical strategies for companies and investors trying to match financial performance with sustainability goals in a fast-changing global market.