Sustainability spillover effects of social, environment and economy: mapping global sustainable development in a systematic analysis

Vahid Mohamad Taghvaee, Mehrab Nodehi (), Abbas Assari Arani (), Yaghoob Jafari () and Jalil Khodaparast Shirazi ()
Additional contact information
Mehrab Nodehi: Texas State University
Abbas Assari Arani: Tarbiat Modares University
Yaghoob Jafari: University of Bonn
Jalil Khodaparast Shirazi: Islamic Azad University

Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, 2023, vol. 7, issue 2, No 3, 329-353

Abstract: Abstract Initially introduced in 2015, the United Nations (UN) has launched 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a unique platform to facilitate global sustainability, end poverty, address environmental concerns, and act as a blueprint for peace and prosperity. Nevertheless, the question remains unanswered whether globalization and openness, as a result of the UN platform, support global sustainability or are against it. To answer this question, our study estimated and compared the effects of each sustainable development pillar of social, environment and economy in global regions and their potential spillover effects on each other. To estimate the sustainability spillover effects (or sustainability elasticities), a SEY (Social-Environment-Economy) model was developed as a package of simultaneous equations, Vector Autoregressive (VAR) and Granger causality approaches from 1971 to 2016. According to the results, the sustainability in each region showed a positive spillover effect on sustainability in other regions. This confirmed synergies between global and local sustainable development as sustainability elasticities range from 1.27% in Asia to 3.96% in MENA (Middle East and North Africa). However, there is some evidence in North America, that indicate trends in de-internationalization and de-globalization. Still, based on the positively dominant role of global spillover effects, this study considered the addition of a 4th pillar of sustainability (or sustainable development) as Peace and Partnership (or spillover effects) that is inter-related with SDG 16 and SDG 17. In this way, a new perspective as “Integrated Sustainability” is introduced in addition to the common weak and strong sustainability. This perspective, in turn, encourages global flow-based governance and improves sustainability in a peaceful and integrated environment through regional unions, intergovernmental and international agreements and partnerships. Graphical abstract

Keywords: Integrated Sustainability; Sustainable development; Globalization; Openness; Spillover effect; Peace (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O19 O21 O24 Q52 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41685-022-00231-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:apjors:v:7:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s41685-022-00231-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... cience/journal/41685

DOI: 10.1007/s41685-022-00231-0

Access Statistics for this article

Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science is currently edited by Yoshiro Higano

More articles in Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().