Abstract
This paper is aimed at examining the relations among CO2 emissions, gross domestic product (GDP) growth, energy consumption, electricity use, urbanization, and income inequality for a sample of 134 countries by using principal components analysis, Granger causality, vector error correction (VEC) models, and panel vector autoregression (PVAR) models. Data was obtained from the World Bank with annual observations from 1990 to 2014. The chosen countries are those with ten years or more of concurrent data of the variables under study. The main empirical findings suggest a Kuznets curve between CO2 emissions per capita and GDP per capita. In addition, CO2 emissions have a long-term relationship with economic growth, energy use, electricity use, urbanization, and inequality. Finally, in the short run, CO2 emissions depend on economic growth, urbanization, and income inequality.
Highlights
Global warming has become a prominent environmental challenge in recent decades
Based on all the above analysis, this paper focuses on the relationships among CO2 emissions, gross domestic product (GDP) growth, energy consumption, urbanization, and income inequality for a sample 134 countries by using principal components, granger causality, VEC models, and panel vector autoregression (PVAR) models
Summarizing the empirical finding reported in the paper, changes in CO2 emissions per capita, energy consumption per capita, electricity use per capita, and the proportion of the urban population to the total population have statistically significant relationships among them
Summary
The relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and economic growth is one of the relevant issues in environmental and energy economics; being CO2 the main responsible gas for global warming. At the same time energy generation is an essential input for industrialization and a significant factor to improve living standards. Such ambivalence presents an ethical dilemma to governments and industry (Antonakakis et al, 2017). It is understandable that the study of the interaction between economic growth, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions has attracted the attention of a large number of researchers which has been extensively documented; see, for instance, Ang (2007), Huang et al (2008), Bartleet and Gounder (2010), Ghosh (2010), Chang (2010), Ozturk and Acaravci (2010), Acaravci and Ozturk (2010), Niu et al (2011), Alam et al (2011), Niu et al (2011), Saboori (2012), Yang and Zhao (2014), Dritsaki and Dritsaki (2014), Saidi and Hammami (2015), Mahmoodi (2017), Fan and Hossai (2018), Cai et al (2018), Mikayilov et al (2018), Gorus and Aydin (2019), and Salazar-Núñez et al (2020), among others
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