Abstract
Abstract Using the data for per capita carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions relative to the average per capita emissions for 21 countries in the organisation for economic co-operation and development (OECD) covering the period 1960–2000, this paper seeks to determine whether the stochastic convergence and β-convergence of CO 2 emissions are supported in countries with the same level of development. In other words, are shocks to relative per capita CO 2 emissions temporary in industrialized countries? We respond to this question by utilizing Breuer et al.'s [Breuer JB, McNown R, Wallace MS. Misleading inferences from panel unit-root tests with an illustration from purchasing power parity. Review of International Economics 2001;9(3):482–93; Breuer JB, McNown R, Wallace MS. Series-specific unit-root tests with panel data. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 2002 64(5):527–46] panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented Dickey–Fuller (SURADF) unit-root tests, which allow us to account for possible cross-sectional effects and to identify how many and which members of the panel contain a unit root. Our empirical findings provide evidence that relative per capita CO 2 emissions in OECD countries are a mixture of I(0) and I(1) processes, in which 14 out of 21 OECD countries exhibit divergence. The results reveal that conventional panel unit-root tests can lead to misleading inferences biased towards stationarity even if only one series in the panel is strongly stationary.
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