Abstract
Nowadays, climate change and global warming have become the main concerns worldwide. One of the main causes are the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced by human activities, especially by the transportation sector. The adherence to international agreements and the implementation of climate change policy are necessary conditions for reducing environmental problems. This paper investigates the lead–lag relationship between Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Annex I member countries on road transport emission performance focusing on the statistical analysis of the lead–lag relationships between the road transport emission time-series from 1970–2018 extracted by the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) database. The analysis was carried out using the cross-correlation function between each pair of the countries’ time-series considered. Empirical results confirm that some nations have been playing a role as leaders, while others as followers. Sweden can be considered the leader, followed by Germany and France. By analyzing their environmental policy history, we can figure out a common point that explains our results.
Highlights
The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) was instituted by the European Commission in order to meet the need of a global emission source database that tracks the annual emissions of greenhouse gases from all known sources
The detection of lead–lag relationships on the road transport emission time-series was made through the application of the cross-correlation function
The world community has repeatedly recognized the importance of leadership in the field of climate change and past agreements have explicitly identified which country is supposed to shoulder the mantle of leadership
Summary
The aim of this study was to raise our awareness on the demand side of leadership by studying the lead–lag relationship concerning potential leaders in the yield of road transport emissions using statistical methods
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