The Impact of Economic Growth on the Dynamics of Carbon Emissions in the United States: Spline Analysis

Abstract

The relationship between trends in energy consumption, carbon emissions and economic growth is of increasing interest to researchers in connection with climate change. Currently, the provisions of several international climate agreements are being implemented – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. At the same time, the implementation of each of the agreements requires maintaining a balance between striving for carbon neutrality and ensuring economic growth. The article attempts to identify the relationship between trends in carbon emissions and GDP production - the main indicator of economic growth. In this sense, the example of the USA turned out to be interesting, where economic growth in recent years has occurred with a permanent reduction in carbon emissions. To identify mutual reactions, taking into account inertia and weak volatility in the dynamics of GDP production and carbon emissions, the article compares the growth rates of indicators against the background of the impact of “event components” of dynamics. To achieve maximum accuracy in comparing the oscillation rate of the studied indicators, it is proposed to model the dynamics of empirical data by splines.