Economic and social determinants of carbon emissions: Evidence from organization of petroleum exporting countries

Abstract

This research investigates the economic and social determinants of carbon emissions in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) over the period 1995–2016. The study particularly examines the link between CO2 emissions and four socio‐economic variables (per‐capita GDP, urbanisation, fossil fuel energy consumption and international trade). A long‐run relationship amongst these variables is confirmed by Kao, Pedroni and Johansen panel cointegration tests. Fully modified ordinary least squares outcomes show that the relationship between CO2 emission and GDP is non‐linear in OPEC countries and follows the inverted U‐shape suggested by the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Also, urbanisation is responsible for a significant proportion of carbon emissions in OPEC countries. As expected, fossil fuel energy consumption is a significant positive driver of carbon emission. International trade significantly contributes to carbon emissions within OPEC member countries.

Population dynamics and environmental quality in Africa

“…Although trade openness provides various advantages for developing economies, poor restrictions appear to have resulted in an influx of inferior and high-energy-consumption items, resulting in increased carbon emissions in these countries. Previous studies such as Acheampong et al (2019) for sub-Saharan African nations, Kwakwa (2020) for Tunisia, Coskuner et al (2020) for Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) countries, have found the incremental effect of trade openness on environmental degradation in many developing nations. Furthermore, Table 8 presents the short-run version of the estimated CS-ARDL model which reveals the speed of adjustment from one period error to another.…”

Impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty on Carbon Emissions: Evidence from 137 Multinational Countries

“…EPU can not only change economic activities or the attention of policymakers (Balcilar et al, 2016;Degiannakis et al, 2018;Hailemariam et al, 2019;Phan et al, 2021) [4][5][6][7], but also change a firm's behaviors or decisions in the direction of environmental protection (Guidolin and La Ferrara, 2010; Kang et al, 2017;Olanipekun et al, 2019;Akron et al, 2020) [8][9][10][11], since economic activities and the manner of production contribute to air pollution (Salahuddin et al, 2018;Shahbaz et al, 2019) [12,13]. With growing social problems such as human diseases, extreme climate events, and natural disasters caused by serious air pollution (Kompas et al, 2018;Shahbaz et al, 2019;Coskuner et al, 2020) [13][14][15], it is generally accepted globally that to reduce air pollution is essential for human survival and for national sustainable development (Hambira et al, 2020;Huo et al, 2020) [16,17]. Thus, it is necessary to query whether increasing EPU can affect air pollution (Jiang et al, 2019;Yu et al, 2021;Adams et al, 2020) [18][19][20].…”

Economic Policy Uncertainty, Social Development, Political Regimes and Environmental Quality

“…With growing social problems such as human diseases, extreme climate events, and natural disasters caused by serious environmental degradation (Kompas et al, 2018; Shahbaz et al, 2019; Coskuner et al, 2020) [ 1 , 2 , 3 ], it is generally accepted worldwide that protecting the environment is essential for the survival of humans and national sustainable development (Hambira et al, 2020; Huo et al, 2020) [ 4 , 5 ]. Following this idea, many scholars have investigated how to achieve better environmental performance, and what factors can affect nature from the perspective of economic activities, technological innovation, international trade, energy efficiency, energy structure, political regimes, and so on (Khan et al, 2019; Mahadevan and Sun, 2020; Wang et al, 2021b) [ 6 , 7 , 8 ].…”