CO2 emission in Africa: national leader's professional background effect

Theories supporting the anthropogenesis of climate change distinguish between macroeconomic and individual determinants as a factor in the mitigation or intensification of CO2 emissions. Specifically, studies show that the environmental issue is primarily political. However, this studies focus only on showing the institutional effects of CO2 emissions in this case democracy; thus neglecting the political variables themselves specifically the role of the leader's profile. This study proposes to this end, in the light of the theory of the political leader, to show that the president's professional background influences CO2 emissions in Africa. After multiple regressions by fixed-effects, random-effects, generalized least squares and Drisc-kraay methods. The results show that the “politician†profession has a negative effect on the quantities of CO2 emitted. This result is robust to different estimation methods as well as to the political regime of each country. The estimation by the GMM method in order to take into account the phenomenon of endogeneity does not relatively change results. Thus, a national leader politician by profession tends to adopt pro-environmental economic policies.