Umer Shahzad
57206773899
Publications - 7
The role of artificial intelligence in enhancing corporate environmental information disclosure: Implications for energy transition and sustainable development
Publication Name: Energy Economics
Publication Date: 2025-08-01
Volume: 148
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
Global climate and environmental issues pose severe challenges to the sustainable development of human society. As major contributors to environmental pollution and carbon emissions, the quality of enterprises' environmental data has gained significant attention in academic and industrial circles. This study analyzes information from Chinese A-share companies spanning 2012 to 2023 to investigate the pathways through which artificial intelligence (AI) technology influences corporate environmental information disclosure (EID). The results indicate that AI significantly enhances the quality of corporate EID by optimising internal control levels and strengthening external supervision mechanisms. These conclusions have been validated through robustness and endogeneity tests. The heterogeneity analysis further reveals that the promoting effect of AI is more significant in large corporates, corporates in central cities, mature corporates, corporates audited by the Big Four international accounting firms, high-tech corporates, and heavily polluting industries. The study innovatively constructs a dual-path theoretical framework of ‘internal management optimisation–external supervision strengthening’ and integrates macro urban AI indicators with micro enterprise data, contributing new empirical support for the digital transformation and green governance of developing countries. Based on these findings, policymakers should promote the innovative application of AI technology in corporate environmental governance, improving internal control norms, optimising the external supervision system, and implementing a classified guidance strategy for different enterprise attributes, so as to help enterprises achieve low-carbon transformation and sustainable development.
Open Access: Yes
The Effects of Regional Banks on Carbon Emissions: A Quasi-Natural Experiment of City Commercial Banks in China
Publication Name: Energy Journal
Publication Date: 2025-05-01
Volume: 46
Issue: 3
Page Range: 123-163
Description:
Financial support is essential to reduce carbon emissions (CEs) and achieve the green transformation of China. To detect the nexus of local finance and CEs, we constructed a two-sector (clean and dirty sectors) model to identify the channels from city commercial banks (CCBs) to CEs involving capital scale, structure, and efficiency. Using the setting of CCBs as a quasi-natural experiment, we applied difference-in-differences (DID), instrument variable (IV), and spatial DID methods to test the effects of the construction of CCBs on CEs in China during 2003 to 2018. The construction of CCBs promoted CEs in cities by offsetting the technological effect and stimulating electricity consumption expansion (scale effect) and reindustrialization (structural effect). CCBs’ branches strengthened the promotion effect of CCBs’ construction on CEs, but the mergers of CCBs mitigated the effect. The effects varied across regions with different features (covering location, per capita income, financial development, environmental regulation, industrial and energy structure, carbon source, and so on). The construction of CCBs showed a spatial spillover effect, increasing the CEs of neighbors. Accordingly, suggestions were proposed to reduce CEs by optimizing CCBs management, policy making, and local carbon reduction efforts.JEL Classification: E44, G28, O16
Open Access: Yes
Energy security challenges in Europe: the importance of renewable energy innovations for economic viability after Russia Ukraine war
Publication Name: Environment Development and Sustainability
Publication Date: 2025-01-01
Volume: Unknown
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
Europe's energy security is a very relevant and debatable topic today, especially since the Russia Ukraine conflict energy security is becoming a challenge for Europe. Many countries in the European Union do not have sufficient fossil energy resources and are dependent on neighboring, energy-rich countries. Such dependence on other countries in the EU is useless and even dangerous, both economically and politically or in terms of energy security. The EU faces serious energy security challenges due to its high dependence on external energy exporters. Countries that export energy resources can manipulate them and exert both economic and political pressure. The main problem is how to assess the energy transformation opportunities while strengthening energy security. Currently, there is a lack of research that would propose solutions to increase energy security on a national scale. Renewable energy solutions would allow achieving these goals, thus creating synergy with economic benefits. During the study, energy business representatives were interviewed in order to understand market trends and attitudes. When processing the data using the factor analysis method, results were obtained that reveal a clear connection between renewable energy and energy security. Research shows that geopolitical security becomes an important aspect when the volume of renewable energy deployment increases.
Open Access: Yes
Impacts of nuclear energy, greener energy, and economic progress on the load capacity factor: What we learn from the leading nuclear power economies?
Publication Name: Geoscience Frontiers
Publication Date: 2024-05-01
Volume: 15
Issue: 3
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
The worldwide tremor of environmental degradation commonly represents the escalation of emissions levels and ecological footprints that harm the planet's biocapacity. This is because of using gigantic non-renewable energy resources, urbanization stream and massive economic activities in the major industrialized nations. Amid this situation, we investigate the influence of disaggregated energy measures, e.g., renewable, and nuclear energy, income growth and urbanization on the load capacity factor (biocapacity divided by the ecological footprint) of major nuclear power countries, such as France, the USA, Canada, China, and Russia during 1990–2021. To this end, we utilize the CS-ARDL procedure because of the endogeneity, common correlation, non-stationarity in data and heterogeneity in panel units. We contribute to considering the supply side dynamic of environmental degradation parameter, the load capacity, from the perspective of the top nuclear power nations that deviates our analysis from the prevailing scholarly works. However, our findings confirm a significantly positive impact of renewable and nuclear energy on the load capacity factor in improving environmental safety. Besides, economic growth and urbanization negatively affect the load capacity dynamics in spurring environmental degradation. Our findings are robust across an alternative estimation technique, namely the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (DH) causation analysis. Therefore, we recommend formulating pragmatic policies to deter the detrimental effects of income and urbanization by properly utilizing sustainable energy resources to conserve the natural environment.
Open Access: Yes
Energy in the backseat? Investigating decarbonization dialogue in supply chain tweets during and after COVID-19
Publication Name: Annals of Operations Research
Publication Date: 2024-01-01
Volume: Unknown
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
While we move into the seventh year of the signing of Paris agreement, research scholars and supply chain firms have paid a lot of emphasis on environmental sustainability with the aim of achieving net zero targets by 2050. However, the global pandemic has somewhat disturbed the focus from environment to resilience due to severe economic implications of COVID-19. In this paper, we contribute to the very scant discussion on Twitter Analytics by analysing supply chain tweets with COVID-19 at the backdrop. Our approach involves analysing how decarbonization related discussions have evolved by capturing the tweets across three timelines: pre pandemic, pandemic and post pandemic. By integrating descriptive analytics, content analytics and machine learning algorithm in topic modelling, we extract textual intelligence related to emissions and pollution from leading firms involving supply chain management. We find that although decarbonization related discussions are at bare minimum in terms of the proportion of discussions within the supply chain context, the overall emotion of tweets indicate fear across all three timelines. Moreover, it was surprising to note that although pollution levels came down due to low economic activity during pandemic, we found more discussions during COVID in comparison to pre-COVID times. Pollution and waste caused by plastics, fuel consumption, reduction in greenhouse gas emission are some of the key topics that emerged during pandemic times. Our paper makes a modest contribution on the role of social media analytics within supply chain context around COVID-19.
Open Access: Yes
Entrepreneurial ecosystem and urban innovation: Contextual findings in the lens of sustainable development from China
Publication Name: Technological Forecasting and Social Change
Publication Date: 2023-06-01
Volume: 191
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
Entrepreneurial activities constitute a critical antecedent to urban innovation (UI), which reflects the levels of innovation and creation activities in cities and is strongly related to their economic development. Existing research on UI focuses on the net effects of individual explanatories in isolation while leaving the synergistic effects between these factors under-examined. Drawing from the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) theory, we constructed an entrepreneurial ecosystem composed of market, finance, human capital, internet access, transportation, and government, adopting the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of 34 representative cities in China to analyze the combined effects of multiple elements underpinned UI. Consequently, the following findings were observed. First, no single entrepreneurial ecosystem element constitutes a necessary condition for a high UI level. Second, large markets and well-designed government services correspond well to high UI levels. Third, the lack of mature transportation and a large market lead to a non-high level. This study advances antecedent research on UI by addressing the complex mechanism of multi-factor linkages.
Open Access: Yes
Dynamic Connectedness Between a Corporate Bond Market With WTI, Geopolitical and Financial Volatility: Spillover From Post-COVID-19 and Russian-Ukrainian Clash
Publication Name: International Journal of Finance and Economics
Publication Date: 2025-01-01
Volume: Unknown
Issue: Unknown
Page Range: Unknown
Description:
This study investigates the dynamic connectedness between the USA's corporate bond market (CB) and various factors, including WTI, financial uncertainty, and geopolitical risks. We employ two advanced techniques to analyse these relationships: TVP-Vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) and VAR connectedness. Specifically, we focus on two significant events, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict (RUC) and the COVID-19 pandemic (C19P), to provide insights into the behaviour of the CB during these critical periods against the oil prices and uncertainties. The empirical analysis reveals compelling findings, particularly concerning the extreme events and the magnitude of effects observed. We find a significant increase in interconnections over the time impacts during these two events, lending support to using an asymmetric and heterogeneous product over the time-varying. Furthermore, we observe that the influence of the GPR and the VIX factors is more robust when uncertainty rises rather than decreases, indicating temporary events. Policymakers and macroprudential authorities can benefit from these findings, as they emphasise the need to adapt to a changing monetary policy and reduce reliance on energy volatility to make informed decisions in a rapidly evolving financial landscape.
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.1002/ijfe.70037
