Can economic complexity clean up digital trade? A quantile look at E7 sustainability

The E7 economies, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Turkey, are rapidly digitalizing, financially innovating, and changing their structures; however, these changes occur in the context of escalating ecological stress. One of the most important issues is to find out whether these transformations contribute to or weaken sustainability. Previous studies tend to consider digital trade (DT), financial technology (FNT), and economic complexity (EC) individually, or they use very simple measures, including CO 2 emissions, which creates gaps in the field of knowledge. The present work seals this gap as it evaluates the moderating impact of economic complexity on the impacts of digital trade and financial technology on environmental sustainability using the Load Capacity Factor (LCF), which is an all-encompassing factor that considers ecological footprint and biocapacity. We estimate the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) on a sample of 2010-2023 panel data based on E7 economies to include the heterogeneous effects by varying degrees of sustainability, which is complemented by robustness checks based on Fixed Effects (FE) and Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS). The findings indicate that fintech (FNT) development, sustainable energy consumption (SEC), and economic complexity (EC) will always restore sustainability, and economic growth has more negative impacts at higher LCF levels. Foreign investment strengthens ecological tolerance mainly in less sustainable economies; however, the benefits become reduced at high values. Digital trade (DT) enhances sustainability in low-LCF settings; however, the effect declines with low economic complexity, and hence structural improvement is required. The existing results show that sustainability results depend not only on digital and financial trends but also on the level of structural development of economies. The policy proposals emphasize that green digital financial ecosystems, accelerated transitions to renewable energy, and complex trade reforms are the way forward to support the Sustainable Development Goals 7, 9, and 13 in the emerging economies.