Economic Growth and Carbon Emission Nexus: A Survey

Abstract

Developing better mitigation strategy requires a comprehensive understanding the relationship between economic growth and carbon emission. Through a literature review, we summarized the following five relationship reported in existing studies: (i) a single causal from economic growth to carbon emission, (ii) a single causal from carbon emissions to economic growth, (iii) a bidirectional causality, (iv) the Environmental Kuznets Curve, (v) no obvious relationship. And then, we further quantify contribution of countries, institutes, authors, investigate research hotspot, and explore future research directions of carbon emissions and economic growth nexus using web of science data from 2001-2019. We find regardless of the total number of publications, institutions and highly cited papers, China research on carbon emissions and economic growth has always been among the best. By analyzing the cooperation relationship between countries and institutions, more than half of the institutions are more inclined to cooperate with institutions in their own countries rather than abroad. Through keyword hotspot analysis and keyword trend analysis, we uncovered the future research directions and hotspots of carbon emissions and economic growth: ①What is the relationship between carbon emissions, economic growth and energy consumption. ②The efforts of China in carbon reduction and economic growth. ③How to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while ensuring stable economic growth. ④The research on carbon emissions and economic growth in the fields of urbanization, financial development, renewable energy, and climate change.