Examining Causal Linkages for Sustainable Development: A Literature Review

Background

Winchester and Salji (2016) emphasized that ‘reviews’ should be informative, personal (but unbiased synopsis of information), and it should provide a balanced view of conflicting findings and inconsistencies along with established and current thinking instead of just providing an exhaustive list of all that has been published. Nakano and Muniz Jr. (2018) are also of the opinion that ‘reviews’ provide a comprehensive analysis of academic production regarding a certain topic, and mention them as very useful for both new and experienced researchers. Thus, it is important to conduct a comprehensive review of studies available in the literature before conducting any research study. This section has been further divided into three sub-sections. The first sub-section contains the two basic concepts used by researchers that define the growth-environment relationship upon which the previous and current literature is based. The second sub-section lists out some important variables, which are addressed in literature to explain such relationship. The third sub-section mentions some important causality testing techniques used in the literature to find out the causal linkages among these variables. Although all the sections are interlinked, and literature survey includes a review of all the studies related to examination of causal linkages for sustainable development, but for the ease of reading, these separate sections are classified.