Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Its Socio-Economic Drivers Nexus: Empirical Evidence from MENA Countries

Abstract

Carbon dioxide emissions is one of the main climate change causes. Nowadays is considered as one of the most important environmental degradation and air pollution in the world. The relationship between CO<sub>2</sub> emissions and their socio-economic determinants is investigated in this study. It uses empirical analysis of significant impact of the economic growth, the tourism development, the globalization, the population health, the population growth and the energy consumption on our interest variable. Thus, we're going to select an econometric model, an Autoregressive Distributed Lag model (ARDL) applied to a sample of 10 MENA countries. Our aim is to measure, long-run and short-run impact of the number of arrivals, the Foreign Direct Investment, government health expenditures, the energy consumption and the population growth rate on the CO<sub>2</sub> emissions. All variables are observed from 1995 to 2020. The methodology adopted in this work is as followed: First, the statistical indicators for the sample are calculated. Secondly, the temporal series stationarity is checked by realizing tests of first and second generation. The Pedroni ARDL and Pesaran cointegration tests are then applied. Finally, Granger causality for panel data is used. The causality analysis between variables is carried out using the Dumitrescu and Hurlin's test. Findings reveal that, in the long term, tourism sector and energy consumption have significant and positive impact on CO<sub>2</sub>. But the economic growth and population growth influenced it negatively and they are statistically significant. In the short term, the dependent variable is statistically impacted by economic growth. The degrees and magnitude of the individual effects of the various variables on the Carbone dioxide emissions vary from country to an other. There are bidirectional and unidirectional relationships causality between different variables. Our findings can be helpful for policy makers seeking to achieve the sustainable development goals in MENA region.