Sustainable development in emerging economies: Comparing the impacts of green finance and financial inclusion

The study compares four independent estimation techniques, the panel ARDL, FMOLS, DOLS (non-distributional), and quantile regression (distributional), examining the comparative impacts of green finance and financial inclusion in twelve emerging economies of the world based on data from 2014 to 2023. The estimates were unanimously used to justify the undeniable influences of green finance and financial inclusion on sustainable development. The results from the non-distributional techniques revealed that green finance and financial inclusion significantly positively impacted sustainable development in emerging economies. The quantile regression results showed that financial inclusion was more beneficial to sustainable development than green finance, although it was around the middle of the distribution. The quantile regression output further proved that the relationship between sustainable development and green finance in emerging economies is weaker than that between financial inclusion. According to these findings, green financial inclusion holds the potential to advance the achievements of sustainable development in emerging economies.