Per capita carbon emissions convergence in developing Asia: A century of evidence from covariate unit root test with endogenous structural breaks

Many studies address the convergence in per capita CO2 emissions. However, whether countries with lower initial per capita emission levels can “catch up” with more emission-intensive countries is unknown. Utilising historical CO2 emission data from 1907, this study investigates whether the per capita CO2 emissions of seven developing Asian economies; namely, China, Indonesia, India, Myanmar, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand, catch up with or converge toward that of the US in the long run. We simultaneously examine the existence of per capita CO2 emissions convergence and the statistical contribution of the emissions drivers using the most recently developed covariate augmented Dickey-Fuller test, which allows for endogenous structural breaks. The main results show firm evidence of catching-up or relative/absolute convergence between the Asian economies and the US in terms of per capita CO2 emissions. Emissions drivers such as population and real GDP per capita growth may encourage the Asian economies to achieve and to maintain the long-run convergence toward the reference country.