This study examines the impact of human development on economic growth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region amidst evolving socioeconomic challenges using panel data from 18 countries over the period 2010–2021. Human development is captured by the Human Development Index (HDI), while economic growth is proxied by gross domestic product (GDP). To address the autocorrelation inherent in the sample panel data and the instability of socioeconomic systems, the analysis employs feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) and panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) estimators, which demonstrated high explanatory power. The empirical results reveal a robust and statistically significant positive relationship between HDI and economic growth, highlighting the central role of investments in health, education, and living standards in fostering long-term economic performance as a strategy for overcoming regional socioeconomic challenges, consistent with endogenous growth theory. Among the control variables, labor force size contributes positively to growth, while inflation and gross fixed capital formation exhibit significant negative effects, suggesting structural inefficiencies, macroeconomic instability, and potential socioeconomic challenges in the region. Foreign direct investment (FDI) shows a negative association with growth in certain specifications, whereas trade openness is found to be statistically insignificant. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of prioritizing human development and institutional quality over reliance on traditional growth drivers to navigate contemporary socioeconomic challenges. The study provides policy-relevant insights for promoting sustainable and inclusive growth and enhancing the resilience of socioeconomic systems in the MENA region.

The increase in the awareness of sustainability practices in most companies and the intensity of the commitment of employees have made the workplace undergo noticeable changes in workplace socio-economic dynamics. This study explored the relationship between green work culture and the level of employee commitment in selected pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria, the most populous and largest consumer market in Africa. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed, and 389 were returned and analyzed using the Pearson product moment correlation method. The results revealed a weak and negative relationship between green work culture and employee commitment within the pharmaceutical companies studied (R = -0.044, p > 0.05). The findings suggest that employees in these organizations demonstrated limited engagement with green work culture practices that could strengthen their commitment and socioeconomic levels. The study identified several factors contributing to this outcome, including inadequate physical and social parameters supporting green initiatives, poor cultural alignment, discouragement, and low employee motivation. These issues are further compounded by broader socioeconomic challenges that affect both organizational policies and individual attitudes toward sustainability. The study emphasizes the need for pharmaceutical organizations in Lagos State to reassess and enhance their green workplace strategies despite prevailing socioeconomic challenges. It recommends that both the physical and social work environments be redesigned to promote employee satisfaction and align with sustainable goals. Addressing socioeconomic challenges through improved incentives, supportive organizational culture, and inclusive workplace design can foster stronger employee commitment and create a more resilient, environmentally conscious workforce.

In an era marked by rising economic uncertainty, inflation, job market instability, and shifting social dynamics, understanding how young individuals develop financial stability has become increasingly critical. That is precisely why it is necessary to ensure Generation Z’s resilience to socioeconomic challenges. Even while youth financial habits are receiving more attention, few studies in a developing South Asian economy examine how attitudes toward money and family financial socialization affect their financial well-being. Therefore, this study investigates how financial attitudes, shaped by early family experiences, mediate the link between financial socialization and financial well-being. Between September and December 2024, a structured questionnaire was distributed both physically on campuses and digitally via online platforms to collect primary data from 452 Gen Z students (aged 18–28) enrolled in 10 management colleges affiliated with national and international universities operating in Kathmandu, Nepal, selected through a purposive sampling method. AMOS SEM was employed to analyze the proposed model comprehensively and test the hypothesized relationships and mediation effects. At the same time, Hayes’ PROCESS macro was used to examine the categorical moderation effect of parents’ education level and occupation. Regression analysis confirmed that stress on saving (β = 0.192), expected financial independence (β = 0.167), and media/peers (β = 0.180) significantly affect financial well-being. Attitude towards money mediated these effects, with significant conditional indirect effects across all parental occupations and education levels (p < 0.05). The findings highlight how social agents shape financial socialization and urge Nepalese youth to invest in their financial well-being amid socioeconomic challenges.

This paper examines how socioeconomic challenges contribute to youth deviance among immigrant communities in Norway. Despite Norway’s robust welfare structures – including anti-discrimination laws and access to education – many immigrant youth continue to face systemic barriers to meaningful inclusion. For these individuals, deviance often emerges as a response to exclusion, frustration, and blocked opportunities rather than an inherent behavioral tendency. Using qualitative content analysis of secondary sources, this paper explores how persistent inequalities in employment, housing, and education intersect with identity formation and social behavior. The findings indicate that when formal protections fail to ensure meaningful social integration, vulnerable youth may resort to deviant behaviors as a means of reclaiming agency or visibility. Effective strategies to address these challenges include stronger enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, equitable hiring practices, expanded educational access, stable housing initiatives, and employment-driven interventions tailored to vulnerable youth. These insights provide a grounded understanding of how deviance arises within institutional gaps and how existing systems can be adapted to foster inclusivity. While situated within the Norwegian context, these findings provide helpful suggestions for regions facing similar socioeconomic challenges. Future research should prioritize comparative analyses, longitudinal studies, and policy evaluations to assess the long-term impact of interventions aimed at reducing socioeconomic exclusion. Addressing these challenges through coordinated efforts is vital for providing stability and meaningful inclusion for vulnerable youth populations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role that remittances play in enhancing the economic and social resilience of Nepal’s tourism industry in the face of socioeconomic challenges. This research highlights how remittance inflows are a financial mechanism that sustains and stabilizes the tourism industry. Rather than viewing remittances and tourism income as complementary sources of revenue, this research focuses on how remittances serve as a source of revenue. The study investigates the short-term and long-term relationships between remittances and tourism income by employing time-series data from 1975 to 2023, applying the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, and conducting Granger causality tests. According to the findings, remittances significantly contribute to the tourism industry by increasing households’ disposable income, boosting the demand for domestic tourism, and opening up opportunities for infrastructure development. Furthermore, the Granger Causality test results indicate that remittances serve as a financial buffer, thereby mitigating the adverse effects of economic downturns and external shocks on the tourism industry. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating remittance flows into tourism development strategies to guarantee the sector’s capacity for adaptation and sustainability during economic uncertainty.

Socioeconomic challenges necessitate accurate trend prediction and in-depth analysis of their implications. This study applies Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling to examine recent reports from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to uncover Algeria’s most pressing socioeconomic issues. By employing R software, structured data were extracted from unstructured textual content, utilizing Word Cloud visualization, “beta” frequencies for topic construction, and “gamma” proportions for topic relevance. The analysis identified key terms such as “fiscal,” “hydrocarbon,” “GDP,” “debt,” and “budget,” indicating considerable thematic overlaps between the two institutions, despite nuanced differences in focus. Both organizations emphasize concerns related to fiscal sustainability and Algeria’s continued reliance on hydrocarbons, highlighting the country’s persistent macroeconomic vulnerabilities and the need for diversified economic strategies. Additionally, this research introduces an innovative conceptual network that graphically maps thematic interconnections, providing insights into the structural composition of institutional discourse. This approach facilitates a comparative assessment of economic narratives, helping policymakers discern areas of convergence and divergence between institutional perspectives. The study underscores the effectiveness of structured text-mining methodologies in analyzing economic discourse and institutional viewpoints, demonstrating their value in capturing complex economic themes. By systematically identifying thematic coherence, this research contributes to economic policy formulation and financial stability in resource-dependent economies. The findings offer valuable insights for policymakers and analysts, enhancing strategic decision-making through empirical evidence. This study highlights the role of data-driven analysis in addressing macroeconomic vulnerabilities and fostering sustainable economic development.

This study investigates how sustainability practices are shaping the tourism and hospitality industry by examining practitioners’ ̂motivations, impacts, as well as challenges that will be encountered. Identifying practical motivators of sustainable behavior in firms through semi-structured interviews with 15 professionals (managers, sustainability officers and frequent guests), this study enlists important drivers like alignment with brand strategy, as well as the cost efficiency of eco-friendly practices, placing the employees and firms on a path to sustainability. Sustainability measures have been shown to improve operational efficiency, with energy conservation technologies leading to utility cost savings of up to 25% and waste management practices producing cost reductions of 10%. Additionally, sustainability efforts like local sourcing played a role in customer satisfaction with 70% of guests indicating that they were more likely to enjoy businesses which supported local communities. While there were some advantages to adoption, such as cost savings and greater productivity, practitioners noted barriers including high upfront costs and ongoing employee training, a particular problem in smaller enterprises with high turnover. The key contributions of the research lie in focusing on valuable short-term financial or reputational benefits of sustainability practices and identifying operational pitfalls that can act as barriers to effective implementation. These indicate, in turn, the imperative of continuous support of industry whether through subsidies or incentives to be able to transit sustainably within the tourism and hospitality sectors.

This paper investigates whether the euro or renminbi could join or even replace the US dollar as a dominant global reserve currency. The US dollar has long been dominant in international trade and finance, due to the size and stability of the US economy and the liquidity of US financial markets. The euro of the European Union (EU) and the renminbi of China challenge the hegemony of the US dollar. The Eurozone’s institutional framework provides political stability and strong monetary authority, which make the associated currency, the euro, attractive as a potential reserve currency. China’s rise as a global economic power promotes the use of its currency in international transactions, propelling global acceptance of the renminbi. China has explicitly challenged US dominance in many international arenas, including finance. In this paper, it is useful for an econophysics approach to measure the sign of the strength of coupling. This approach is adapted to define the divergence rate of the US dollar in relation to other currencies, specifically the euro and the renminbi, by quantifying how the dollar diverges over time based on currency indexes. It involves calculating forces that represent the divergence rates between the US dollar and these currencies, using a modified version of Coulomb’s law. It also illuminates the dynamics of reserve currency competition, reaffirming the US dollar’s central role in the global financial system from 2001 to 2022. Despite the emergence of potential challengers like the euro and renminbi, the dollar’s dominance is likely to continue. As China’s economy, international trade, and military power have expanded, the renminbi is increasingly seen as a potential reserve currency in the global financial system. However, China has shown a willingness to centralize political power, perhaps making other countries more likely to resist the renminbi becoming a reserve currency. The euro and renminbi do not present credible alternatives to the US dollar because (1) political fragmentation within the EU and differing fiscal policies among member states undermine the euro’s reliability as a universal reserve asset, and (2) China enacts significant capital controls, lacks financial market transparency, and maintains a tight grip on economic policies. The US dollar’s unparalleled liquidity, its deep financial markets, and America’s geopolitical influence ensure the dollar’s continued dominance as the world’s primary reserve currency. The inherent structural and political challenges the euro and renminbi face make both unlikely to displace the dollar in the foreseeable future. Broader US hegemony, arising from it having the world’s largest economy and strongest military, has supported the dollar’s dominant role as a reserve currency, a dominance expected to endure.

This study examines the strategic responses of Chinese female business owners to perceived operational barriers, integrating insights from the Resource-Based View, Signaling Theory, Institutional Theory, and Social Role Theory. Data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey (conducted in China in 2012; the sample comprises 2,700 firms from diverse China’s industries) was analyzed with advanced path modeling techniques. All statistical analyses were conducted using R (version 4.0.2) and SPSS 29. The R packages lavaan and semTools were utilized for implementing Structural Equation Model (SEM) techniques. How female ownership influences diversification strategies was investigated with the mediation effect of business environment barriers and the moderation effect of international certifications. It is revealed that female entrepreneurs are more likely to pursue international diversification due to heightened perceptions of business environment barriers. Perceived regulatory barriers are positively related to product

The topic of digitalization has become increasingly relevant as it plays a critical role in shaping the competitiveness of European countries in a globalized economy. This research paper aims to examine the impact of digitalization on the competitiveness of selected European countries by analysing key indicators that define digital progress and economic performance. Digital transformation has been identified as a fundamental driver of economic growth, innovation, and efficiency across various sectors, emphasizing the importance of digital technologies in shaping contemporary economies. The study utilizes a combination of correlation, canonical, and regression analyses to systematically explore the relationship between digitalization and competitiveness. Data for 10 European countries – Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Portugal – was collected from the European Commission, World Economic Forum, and official sources from IMD and WIPO over the period from 2017 to 2022. The key indicators analysed include the Digital Economy and Society Index, Global Competitiveness Index, Global Innovation Index, E-Government Index, and R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP. These variables were selected to comprehensively assess the state of digitalization and its correlation with national competitiveness. Findings from the analysis suggest that digitalization has a profound influence on the competitiveness of the countries studied. High DESI and GII scores, indicating advanced digital integration and innovation capacity, are positively correlated with a higher GCI score, reflecting global competitiveness. Moreover, R&D expenditure emerged as a significant factor contributing to digital readiness and economic performance. The disparities in digitalization levels across countries highlight the uneven progress in adopting digital technologies, suggesting a need for policies that enhance digital infrastructure, skills development, and innovation ecosystems. The discussion emphasizes that digitalization drives the transformation of traditional business models, improves efficiency in manufacturing (Industry 4.0), and fosters innovation in services such as fintech, e-commerce, and public administration. However, challenges like the digital skills gap, regulatory barriers, and differences in infrastructure and policy readiness persist, impacting the overall ability of European countries to leverage digital transformation for competitiveness. The paper concludes by advocating for continued investment in digital infrastructure, balanced regulatory frameworks, and skill development initiatives to maximize the benefits of digitalization and enhance the competitive standing of European nations in the digital economy.