Unleashing power of financial technologies on mineral productivity in G-20 countries

This study aims to investigate the effects of financial technologies (FinTech) on mineral productivity, used for the first time in an empirical analysis, for G-20 countries. In the process, the impacts of financial technology, population, economic growth, trade openness, human capital, and total factor productivity on mineral productivity are examined using panel regression and panel VAR procedure for the period from 2002 to 2019. Empirical research yielded evidence indicating that increasing factor productivity and finance technology drive an increase in mineral productivity. Nonetheless, there is an inverse relationship between trade openness and mineral productivity. Moreover, there is no statistically significant relationship between economic growth, population growth, human capital accumulation, and mineral productivity. Furthermore, we also utilized with method of moments quantile regression technique to observe the effects of explanatory variables on different quantiles of mineral productivity. The findings demonstrate that although economic growth has a negative effect on mineral productivity across all quantiles, a positive increase in factor productivity has an influence on mineral productivity across all quantiles. However, financial technology and human capital accumulation only benefit mineral productivity at huge quantiles. Additionally, the outcomes of the robustness check techniques used show that financial technologies and mineral productivity have a bidirectional causal link and that, in the former instance of positive shocks in the latter, there are positive and substantial reactions. © 2024 Elsevier Ltd