Sakina Hajiyeva

This study aims to assess the positive impact of infrastructure investments on the dynamics of economic growth. The sample includes ten countries (Azerbaijan, Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, China, Georgia, Mexico, Moldova, Serbia, and Turkey) for 2011–2020 that meet the following criteria:

• belong to upper-middle-income economies (according to the World Bank Atlas method);
• the OECD statistical database contains data on investment volumes in infrastructure development of road, railway transport, inland waterways, sea, and airports (by all financing sources). The primary focus was put on the analysis of this issue in Azerbaijan.

GDP per capita growth was selected as the resulting parameter; the main dependent variable was infrastructure investment volumes (total inland and infrastructure road, rail, and air investment), and additional dependent variables were a foreign direct investment (net inflows) and gross domestic investment. Shapiro-Wilk test (for checking normal data), Spearman and Pearson methods (for correlation estimation), Granger test (for detecting causal relationships), and Arellano-Bond dynamic panel-data estimation (for influence formalization) were used. As a result, the following parameters exert the greatest influence on economic growth level: value of gross domestic investment (its growth by 1% causes GDP per capita growth to increase by 0.54% without a time lag); value of infrastructure investment inland (total) (by 1.51% with a three-year lag); value of infrastructure road investment (by 0.41% with a three-year lag). These results can help future research and decision-making at different management levels to strengthen economic growth through infrastructure investment.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
The growing focus of the IMF, World Bank, OECD, and European Commission on aligning finance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) raises the question of whether sustainability enhances banking sector profitability. This study aims to assess the impact of SDG performance on bank profitability, measured by return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and interest margin to gross income, controlling for GDP growth and inflation. The analysis uses an unbalanced panel of 143 countries over 2000–2024 (more than 2,100 country-year observations), applying fixed effects, random effects, and multilevel models with robust covariance estimators. The results show that the SDG Index Score has a weak and inconsistent effect on profitability. It is weakly positive for ROA (β = 0.125, p = 0.085) and marginally positive for interest margins (β = 0.151, p = 0.019), but becomes insignificant under robust specifications. For ROE, the SDG Index turns significantly negative in the random effects model (β = –0.119, p = 0.001), suggesting that higher SDG performance may be associated with lower equity returns. In contrast, the macroeconomic controls are robust across all models: GDP growth increases ROA (β = 0.107, p < 0.001) and ROE (β = 0.108, p < 0.001) but reduces interest margins (β = –0.061, p < 0.001), while inflation consistently raises profitability across all indicators. Regional patterns further indicate lower profitability in OECD and Western Europe and higher interest margins in East and South Asia, Latin America, and MENA.