The educational system of the twenty-first century is student-centered. Students are the generation that has seen firsthand the enormous expansion of online media represented by the Internet, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence, which has increased the relevance of digital competence in higher education. This is because they are the ones who have grown up with the rapid development of computer networks and who have firsthand knowledge of those technologies. Additionally, the epidemic has raised public awareness of the need of for digital literacy. The increasing digitalization and modernization of every area of our lives to satisfy the needs of modern education is creating new chances for both teaching and learning. The world over, more and more technology is being used to improve training and education, which eliminates the need to take into account regional factors that are associated with traditional education. More and more educational establishments are using technology to improve instruction. The paper’s primary objective is to pinpoint the internet-related and digitalization-related variables that have an impact on higher education in European nations using the following indicators: patent applications, resident population, high-tech exports, research and development spending, and school enrollment at the tertiary level (% gross). Due to data availability, the sample includes 40 nations over the period 1996-2020. The World Bank database is the source of the information. Panel-data VAR and panel Granger causality were the methodologies we used. Our findings suggested that the Internet and digitalization considerably impact higher education because high-technology exports represent both the internet and digitalization.

This study investigates the relationship between economic growth, oil price, and circular economy through biomass energy consumption in South Asian countries, examining the possibility of biomass consumption by enhancing economic growth and decreasing oil price. Energy is the backbone of economic growth, while biomass energy resources being the best renewable energy resource alternative considering the production cost. There are no studies in the literature with regard to the influence of biomass consumption on economic growth and oil price; our study has been designed to fill this gap. For this, we used data for the period 2010–2020 and ARDL and Granger causality. The findings show that all elasticities are statistically significant in the short term for Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. In the long term, coefficients of oil price for Pakistan and Sri Lanka are positively associated with significant elasticities, whereas biomass energy consumption is negatively associated with oil price in India and Bangladesh. Biomass energy consumption significantly impacts the economic growth of Pakistan and Bangladesh in the long term, whereas in the case of India and Bangladesh, an association between biomass energy consumption and GDP is shown. As a policy implication, governments can create and adjust policies in order to reduce costs in the energy system and protect the environment from pollution with the adoption of a biomass energy system because fossil oil and coal energy systems are unfavorable to economic growth, especially across South Asian countries.

Although NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and cryptocurrencies are active on the same market, their prices are not so closely related over time. The objective of this paper is to identify the relationship between the two types of assets (NFTs and the cryptocurrencies Ethereum, Crypto Coin, and Bitcoin), using data for the period between September 2020 until February 2022. The conclusions of the study are useful for cryptocurrency and NFT issuers, but also for investors on the financial market who are reconfiguring their portfolios with increasing frequency, and use these new assets for speculative or hedging purposes based on blockchain technology. The results highlighted relationships between NFTs and Ethereum, between Ethereum and Crypto Coin, and between Bitcoin and Ethereum, Ethereum being a bridge between all four. Therefore, NFTs present a relationship with Ethereum, the NFTs price had a causal effect on the price of Ethereum.

The paper analyzed the determinants of Working Capital Management (WCM) of listed manufacturing firms across South Asian Association of Regional Corporation (SAARC) countries from 2000 to 2020. Employing a Generalized Method of Moments, we found that operational risk and market risk are key hurdles to efficient working capital management. Our results are providing an important managerial implication for the use of operational risk and market risk in selected countries. Firms in selected countries can manage an optimal level of WCM through controlling operational risk and market risk, therefore should develop a ranking system about WCM activities to boost up their firm value.