Influence of ecological innovation and green energy investment on unemployment in China: evidence from advanced quantile approach

Abstract

This study investigates the dynamic and asymmetric effects of ecological innovation and green energy investment on China’s unemployment from 1995 to 2020. The study has applied Quantile Autoregressive Distribution Lag (QARDL) model to explore the association between the study variables at different grids of quartiles. The overall results reveal that environmental technology and clean energy investments have a negative employment impact in the short-run and long-run, while environmental technology’s significance is high in the short-run only. It implies that environmental technology and clean energy investments create ample job opportunities in China’s energy sector and significantly address the growing unemployment issue. Moreover, the study examines the directional association among the variables by applying the Quantiles Granger Causality. It suggests a bidirectional causality between clean energy investment and unemployment, while a unidirectional relationship is observed between environmental technology and unemployment. These findings offer relevant policy recommendations.