IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/biw/wpaper/54.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How does carbon dioxide emission change with the economic development? Statistical experiences from 132 countries

Author

Listed:
  • Hua Liao
  • Huaishu Cao

Abstract

Issues concerning what measures should be adopted to achieve a sustainable world with less carbon dioxide emission and in what magnitude should we reduce our emission have been on agenda in both international negotiations and countries¡¯ policy making aimed at coping with potential global climate change. These issues cannot be easily addressed unless comprehensive understanding about the countries' status quo as well as historical relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emission are gained. In this paper, we examine the historical relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emission; the ex-ante restrictions on function forms and the poorly handled robustness issues rife in economics literature are synthetically addressed. Evidence from recent four decades indicates that per capita carbon dioxide emission first significantly and monotonously increase at low income level and flattens after per capita income reaches at about 22,000$ (2005 constant price). We perform various robustness checks by employing different data sources, different model specifications and different econometric estimates. The captured development-emission relationship is robust. Our empirical results indicate factors such as urbanization, population density, trade, energy mix and economic environment etc. impact the absolute level of carbon dioxide emission not the overall income elasticity structure of carbon dioxide emission.

Suggested Citation

  • Hua Liao & Huaishu Cao, 2012. "How does carbon dioxide emission change with the economic development? Statistical experiences from 132 countries," CEEP-BIT Working Papers 54, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEP), Beijing Institute of Technology.
    • Handle: RePEc:biw:wpaper:54
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ceep.bit.edu.cn/docs/2018-10/20181011140508459060.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2001. "Applications of Generalized Method of Moments Estimation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 87-100, Fall.
    2. Lee, Chien-Chiang & Lee, Jun-De, 2009. "Income and CO2 emissions: Evidence from panel unit root and cointegration tests," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 413-423, February.
    3. Taskin, Fatma & Zaim, Osman, 2000. "Searching for a Kuznets curve in environmental efficiency using kernel estimation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 217-223, August.
    4. Bertinelli, Luisito & Strobl, Eric, 2005. "The Environmental Kuznets Curve semi-parametrically revisited," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 88(3), pages 350-357, September.
    5. Holtz-Eakin, Douglas & Selden, Thomas M., 1995. "Stoking the fires? CO2 emissions and economic growth," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 85-101, May.
    6. Azomahou, Theophile & Laisney, Francois & Nguyen Van, Phu, 2006. "Economic development and CO2 emissions: A nonparametric panel approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(6-7), pages 1347-1363, August.
    7. William T. Harbaugh & Arik Levinson & David Molloy Wilson, 2002. "Reexamining The Empirical Evidence For An Environmental Kuznets Curve," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(3), pages 541-551, August.
    8. Muller-Furstenberger, Georg & Wagner, Martin, 2007. "Exploring the environmental Kuznets hypothesis: Theoretical and econometric problems," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(3-4), pages 648-660, May.
    9. Stern, David I., 2004. "The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1419-1439, August.
    10. Richard Schmalensee & Thomas M. Stoker & Ruth A. Judson, 1998. "World Carbon Dioxide Emissions: 1950-2050," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(1), pages 15-27, February.
    11. Tamazian, Artur & Bhaskara Rao, B., 2010. "Do economic, financial and institutional developments matter for environmental degradation? Evidence from transitional economies," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 137-145, January.
    12. Suri, Vivek & Chapman, Duane, 1998. "Economic growth, trade and energy: implications for the environmental Kuznets curve," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 195-208, May.
    13. Fodha, Mouez & Zaghdoud, Oussama, 2010. "Economic growth and pollutant emissions in Tunisia: An empirical analysis of the environmental Kuznets curve," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 1150-1156, February.
    14. Sharma, Susan Sunila, 2011. "Determinants of carbon dioxide emissions: Empirical evidence from 69 countries," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 376-382, January.
    15. He, Jie & Richard, Patrick, 2010. "Environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 in Canada," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1083-1093, March.
    16. Selden Thomas M. & Song Daqing, 1994. "Environmental Quality and Development: Is There a Kuznets Curve for Air Pollution Emissions?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 147-162, September.
    17. Galeotti, Marzio & Lanza, Alessandro & Pauli, Francesco, 2006. "Reassessing the environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 emissions: A robustness exercise," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 152-163, April.
    18. Pesaran, M. Hashem, 2012. "On the interpretation of panel unit root tests," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(3), pages 545-546.
    19. Jiahua Pan, 2009. "China expects leadership from rich nations," Nature, Nature, vol. 461(7267), pages 1055-1055, October.
    20. Burke, Paul J., 2013. "The national-level energy ladder and its carbon implications," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(4), pages 484-503, August.
    21. Maximilian Auffhammer & Ralf Steinhauser, 2012. "Forecasting The Path of U.S. CO_2 Emissions Using State-Level Information," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(1), pages 172-185, February.
    22. Stern, David I., 2010. "Between estimates of the emissions-income elasticity," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 2173-2182, September.
    23. Jie He, 2007. "Is the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis valid for developing countries? A survey," Cahiers de recherche 07-03, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    24. Gary Koop, 1998. "Carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth: A structural approach," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(4), pages 489-515.
    25. AkbostancI, Elif & Türüt-AsIk, Serap & Tunç, G. Ipek, 2009. "The relationship between income and environment in Turkey: Is there an environmental Kuznets curve?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 861-867, March.
    26. -, 2009. "The economics of climate change," Sede Subregional de la CEPAL para el Caribe (Estudios e Investigaciones) 38679, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    27. Poumanyvong, Phetkeo & Kaneko, Shinji, 2010. "Does urbanization lead to less energy use and lower CO2 emissions? A cross-country analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 434-444, December.
    28. Suits, Daniel B & Mason, Andrew & Chan, Louis, 1978. "Spline Functions Fitted by Standard Regression Methods," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(1), pages 132-139, February.
    29. Kearsley, Aaron & Riddel, Mary, 2010. "A further inquiry into the Pollution Haven Hypothesis and the Environmental Kuznets Curve," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(4), pages 905-919, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brantley Liddle & George Messinis, 2018. "Revisiting carbon Kuznets curves with endogenous breaks modeling: evidence of decoupling and saturation (but few inverted-Us) for individual OECD countries," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 783-798, March.
    2. Giedrė Lapinskienė & Kęstutis Peleckis & Neringa Slavinskaitė, 2017. "Energy consumption, economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union countries," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(6), pages 1082-1097, November.
    3. Jiansheng Qu & Tek Maraseni & Lina Liu & Zhiqiang Zhang & Talal Yusaf, 2015. "A Comparison of Household Carbon Emission Patterns of Urban and Rural China over the 17 Year Period (1995–2011)," Energies, MDPI, vol. 8(9), pages 1-21, September.
    4. Giedrė Lapinskienė & Kęstutis Peleckis & Marijus Radavičius, 2015. "Economic development and greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union countries," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(6), pages 1109-1123, December.
    5. Fei Wang & Changjian Wang & Jing Chen & Zeng Li & Ling Li, 2020. "Examining the determinants of energy-related carbon emissions in Central Asia: country-level LMDI and EKC analysis during different phases," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(8), pages 7743-7769, December.
    6. Sugiawan, Yogi & Islam, Moinul & Managi, Shunsuke, 2017. "Global marine fisheries with economic growth," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 158-168.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bennedsen, Mikkel & Hillebrand, Eric & Jensen, Sebastian, 2023. "A neural network approach to the environmental Kuznets curve," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    2. Mikkel Bennedsen & Eric Hillebrand & Sebastian Jensen, 2022. "A Neural Network Approach to the Environmental Kuznets Curve," CREATES Research Papers 2022-09, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    3. He, Jie & Richard, Patrick, 2010. "Environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 in Canada," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1083-1093, March.
    4. Miguel Rodríguez & Yolanda Pena-Boquete, 2013. "Mishandling carbon intensities," Working Papers 1302, Universidade de Vigo, Departamento de Economía Aplicada.
    5. Azomahou, Theophile & Laisney, Francois & Nguyen Van, Phu, 2006. "Economic development and CO2 emissions: A nonparametric panel approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(6-7), pages 1347-1363, August.
    6. Aslanidis Nektarios, 2009. "Environmental Kuznets curves for carbon emissions: A critical survey," wp.comunite 0051, Department of Communication, University of Teramo.
    7. Nektarios Aslanidis, 2009. "Environmental Kuznets Curves for Carbon Emissions: A Critical Survey," Working Papers 2009.75, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    8. Brantley Liddle & George Messinis, 2018. "Revisiting carbon Kuznets curves with endogenous breaks modeling: evidence of decoupling and saturation (but few inverted-Us) for individual OECD countries," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 783-798, March.
    9. Roxana Pincheira & Felipe Zuniga, 2021. "Environmental Kuznets curve bibliographic map: a systematic literature review," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(S1), pages 1931-1956, April.
    10. Yang, Haisheng & He, Jie & Chen, Shaoling, 2015. "The fragility of the Environmental Kuznets Curve: Revisiting the hypothesis with Chinese data via an “Extreme Bound Analysis”," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 41-58.
    11. Priscilla Massa-Sánchez & Luis Quintana-Romero & Ronny Correa-Quezada & María de la Cruz del Río-Rama, 2020. "Empirical Evidence in Ecuador between Economic Growth and Environmental Deterioration," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-20, January.
    12. Aslanidis, Nektarios, 2009. "Environmental Kuznets Curves for Carbon Emissions: A Critical Survey," Working Papers 2072/15847, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    13. Marzio Galeotti & Matteo Manera & Alessandro Lanza, 2006. "On the Robustness of Robustness Checks of the Environmental Kuznets Curve," Working Papers 2006.22, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    14. Massimiliano Mazzanti & Antonio Musolesi, 2010. "Carbon Abatement Leaders and Laggards Non Parametric Analyses of Policy Oriented Kuznets Curves," Working Papers 2010.149, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    15. Kacprzyk, Andrzej & Kuchta, Zbigniew, 2020. "Shining a new light on the environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 emissions," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    16. Sinha, Avik & Bhattacharya, Joysankar, 2017. "Estimation of environmental Kuznets curve for SO2 emission: A case of Indian cities," MPRA Paper 100009, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Wang, Yuan & Han, Rong & Kubota, Jumpei, 2016. "Is there an Environmental Kuznets Curve for SO2 emissions? A semi-parametric panel data analysis for China," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 1182-1188.
    18. Zanin, Luca & Marra, Giampiero, 2012. "Assessing the functional relationship between CO2 emissions and economic development using an additive mixed model approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 1328-1337.
    19. Luzzati, T. & Orsini, M., 2009. "Investigating the energy-environmental Kuznets curve," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 291-300.
    20. Stern, David I., 2014. "The Environmental Kuznets Curve: A Primer," Working Papers 249424, Australian National University, Centre for Climate Economics & Policy.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income elasticity; Carbon dioxide emission; Linear spline model; Environmental Kuznets curve;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:biw:wpaper:54. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Zhi-Fu Mi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cebitcn.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.