Analysis of the Literature for Carbon Kuznets Curve

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyze the literature of EKC for the selected studies for the period 2002 to 2020 for income-energy-emissions nexus and provide research directions for the current literature. The result of this study shows that the general tendency in the literature is to examine the symmetric relationships between income and emissions, and the analysis of non-linear relationship between income and emissions should be increased. Although many variables are added to income-energy-emissions nexus to analyze the EKC relationship, the effect of external debt on the EKC relationships is not analyzed in the literature in detail. The effect of external debt on the EKC relationship should be analyzed for developed and developing countries. The analysis should be carried out more for developing countries than developed countries since developing countries may be financing their emission intense industries through external debt. For further research directions, this study recommends coal consumption should be analyzed instead of carbon emissions for the EKC relationship for developed and developing countries.