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This paper uses a quantile fixed-effect panel data approach to investigate how environmental policy stringency affects CO2 emissions in a set of 32 OECD countries from 1990 to 2015. This approach allows us to identify the asymmetric impact of policy stringency on emissions, considering the emission level recorded in each analysed country. More precisely, we posit that the effectiveness of environmental regulations and policies is influenced by the air pollution level. Our results show that an increase in policy stringency has a negative impact on emissions. As a new contribution, we show that environmental stringency has a more powerful impact in the countries with lower level of carbon emissions. This result is also recorded for the subset of EU member countries of the OECD. Moreover, we show that policy stringency measures only become effective after the implementation of the Kyoto agreement. Finally, the policy stringency effect is stronger for EU countries at high risk of missing the 20-20-20 target in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.JEL codes: Q43, Q56, F21

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between CO2 Emissions and GDP per capita of three East Asian countries (China, Japan, and South Korea). The Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis and its possible implications to the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol Agreement will be tested. The independent variables Employment and Energy consumption will be used as control variables. Multiple regression analysis and cointegration tests will be used on time series data of Japan, Korea, and China that is obtained from the World Bank database. GDP per capita is measured in constant 2010 US$, CO2 emission in kt, Employment in the ratio of total employment to total population aged 15 and above, and Energy Consumption in annual kWh per capita.

This paper studies the effects of financial development, economic growth, and climate-related financial policies on carbon emissions for G20 countries. The focus is particularly on financial policies implemented to scale up green finance and address climate-related financial risks from 2000 to 2017 and represent this paper’s value added. The empirical results obtained by relying on the panel quantile regression approach indicate that the impacts of the different explanatory variables on carbon emission are heterogeneous. Specifically, the effect of the stock of short-term financial policies on carbon emissions is negative, and its effect becomes smaller at higher quantiles. The stock of long-term policies also shows significant negative coefficients, but its impact is stronger for higher quantiles. No significance is reported for the lowest quantile. Financial development contributes to improving environmental quality, and its impact is larger in higher emission countries. Energy consumption increases carbon emissions, with the strongest effects occurring at higher quantiles. Our results also support the validity of the EKC relationship and positive effects of GDP and population on high carbon emissions levels. Estimation results are robust to alternative model specifications and after controlling for the role played by adopting international climate change mitigation policies as proxied by the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol.

The purpose of this study is to analyze convergence and factors that affect CO2 growth in ASEAN countries. The model used is the Augmented Green Solow Model developed by Rios & Gianmoena (a2018) based on Brock & Taylor (2004, 2010) which takes into account spatial effects. This study found that during the period 1971-2019, ASEAN countries experienced convergence which was shown to be a significant and negative coefficient of initial CO2, but was fairly slow compared to other studies or regions. Significant variables affect CO2/capita growth in ASEAN countries, namely physical capital investment and trade openness that increases emissions, while human capital significantly reduces emissions. Significant spatial effects occur in initial CO2/capita, physical capital investment, and human capital. The Kyoto Protocol was found to be insignificant in CO2/capita growth in ASEAN countries.Keywords: CO2, Convergence, Green Solow ModelJEL Classifications: C23, O13, O44, Q53, Q56DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.11582

An energy transition is currently underway around the world, in response to the objectives laid out by international agreements. Since the Kyoto protocol and the Paris agreement, countries have been making considerable efforts to replace fossil fuels with alternative sources in the electricity generation mix. The energy transition of each country depends on their starting point, so international agreements on their own, may not be effective in speeding up the transition. In this paper, two energy transition metrics are calculated: clean-energy transition and low-carbon-energy transition. The clean-energy transition describes the transition from fossil to renewable sources, while the low-carbon-energy transition represents the transition from fossil to renewable and nuclear power sources. This paper aims to examine the determinants of energy transition in countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development over a long-time span, from 1971 to 2016. Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) and Panel-corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) estimators were applied to deal with heteroskedasticity and cross-sectional dependence phenomena. Generally, the results show that energy security and the carbon-intensity of energy consumption are obstructing a low-carbon transition. Energy-efficiency and trade-openness are driving the energy transition, while the carbon-intensity of energy consumption is constraining it. Energy efficiency measures are needed to accelerate the energy transition, by reducing the use of fossil fuels.

Relying on complex interdependence as a theoretical approach, this paper investigates the hypothetical damage that the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement could represent for Africa in terms of climate finance. In June 2017, President Donald Trump publicly declared the U.S. intention to withdraw from further participating in the multilateral Paris Agreement. To keen followers and analysts of the U.S. climate policy beyond its borders, such unilateral action was never a surprise. Rather, it is nostalgic of the experience of the Kyoto Protocol, particularly how more or less similar move unduly prolonged the global climate negotiations up till late 2015 when the Paris Agreement came about. Although the Paris Agreement is remarkable as it represents the first states-wide climate deal, it however left a number of issues unresolved. Notable among which is climate finance which has remained the most contentious and of critical concern to developing countries, particularly in Africa. Pitted against the fact that Africa contributes less to climate change and, ironically, the hardest-hit by the phenomenon, the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement aggravates concerns around climate finance and, indeed, portends additional burdens for a continent that is still struggling to cope with the untoward fallout of climate change.

The following sections contain a formal description of the solution of the allocation problems in a simple model of a market economy. The analysis is first restricted to the case of an economy with private commodities on regular markets, which serves as a “benchmark”. Thereafter the investigations are extended to an economy which includes environmental or external effects. The formal model, which is adjusted to allow for special externalities, reveals the impact of environmental effects on the basic structure of the economy and the effects on the functioning of the market mechanism. The final section refers to public commodities and the public good characteristics of many environmental commodities.

Climate and trade policy present serious contemporary challenges for all nations. Developed market economies are struggling with trade policy in the modern era of globalization, and the resulting realignments are straining the post-war international economic order. National emissions pledges under the Paris Agreement appear at present to fall far short of achieving the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions cuts that science suggests are needed to remain in a

Using a comparative approach, this study examines the nexus among renewable energy 7 consumption, economic growth, trade, urbanisation and CO2 emissions for Australia and Canada 8 for the period 1960-2015. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds tests are used to 9 explore the long-run relationships amongst the selected variables and the causal relationships are 10 examined by the vector error correction model (VECM) Granger causality tests. The findings 11 suggest that there is evidence of the long run relationships amongst the variables. The results in 12 Australia indicate that in both the long run and short run, economic growth increases CO2 13 emissions, whereas in the short run, the trade and renewable energy consumptions decrease CO2 14 emissions. The VECM causality tests for Australia indicate that in the short-run, the economic 15 growth, trade, and renewable energy consumption Granger cause CO2 emissions; whereas the 16 long-run causal relationships are found among CO2 emissions, economic growth, trade and 17 renewable energy consumption. In the case of Canada, the results show that in both the long run 18 and short run, trade increases CO2 emissions, while in the long run the economic growth and 19 urban population increase CO2 emissions. The VECM causality analyses show the long-run 20 bidirectional causality among CO2 emissions, economic growth, and renewable energy 21 consumption. In addition, the CO2 emissions tended to decrease in Australia but not in Canada 22 after each country officially ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2007 and 2002, respectively. Policy 23 recommendations are made based on these findings.

This paper quantifies the carbon emissions embodied in the bilateral trade between India from the non-Annex-I country list under the Kyoto Protocol (1997) with two of its biggest trade partners from the Annex-II country list, the USA and the UK, by applying the input–output modelling during the years of 2011 to 2014, to evaluate and analyse the conjecture around the carbon leakage. After the calculation of the embodied carbon in these bilateral exports and imports, the study further inspects the roles of important drivers those are influencing the calculated emission imbalances in trade. This study addresses a high emission-intensive energy consumption pattern of India relative to both the USA and the UK which is confirming the possibility of carbon leakage from Indian commodity production sectors and inducing a huge contribution from these bilateral trades into the global emissions. Finally, this study provides evidence from a spatial decomposition analysis that the differences among the emission-intensity of output between India and its major developed country trade partners create the maximum impact on the implied emission imbalances in the bilateral trades. With the anticipation of increased India–USA and the India–UK bilateral trade, this study proposes suggestion to reduce India’s emission intensity of output through fuel switching to the less emission-intensive energy options and relieve the pressure on the global environment.

With the rising importance of carbon markets, the new derived financial instruments and indicator indexes related to carbon markets have been raising researchers’ appetite. According to that aspect, to investigate the relationship between price formation in carbon markets and equity prices of these firms trading in carbon markets is one of the aims of this study. This study examines CO2 prices of European Union Emission Allowances and daily closing values of MSCI Low Carbon Leaders USD Dollar Price Indexes via Markov Regime Switching Models from a non-linear perspective. Among the findings, there is a relationship between the index derived from the stock performances of North American firms trading in carbon markets and carbon prices. Furthermore, the strength of the relationship increases during periods of recession identified by the MRS models.Keywords: Carbon markets, energy prices, Markov Regime Switching Model, Kyoto Protocol.JEL Classifications: F30, G15DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.9193

An extensive decomposition analysis was used to research the primary driving forces behind energy-related carbon dioxide emissions per capita for the period 1993 to 2017 in a panel of South American countries. Evidence was found that the effect of per capita renewable productivity was challenging and compromised in South Latin American countries. Decoupling changed from a weak state to a strong decoupling state after the Kyoto protocol. When we remove the renewable productivity per capita effect, the results show that the state of strong decoupling was mainly achieved due to a group of economic drivers, with the negative changes in energy intensity, and in the gross domestic investment, proving to be the most significant contributors to decreasing CO2 emission per capita.

تحاول هذه الورقة قياس تأثيـر کل من الانفتاح التجاري، والتنمية الاقتصادية، والاستثمار الأجنبـي المباشر، واستهلاک الطاقة، والتحضر على البيئة باستخدام بيانات السلاسل الزمنية Time Series خلال الفتـرة 1982-2013 في حالات دول الولايات المتحدة، والصيـن، ومصر، وذلک من خلال اتباع أسلوب Engle-Granger Two-Step Model لاختبار العلاقة طويلة الأجل بيـن المتغيـرات والعلاقة الديناميکية في الأجل القصيـر، من خلال تطبيق نموذج تصـحيح الخطأ (Error Corection Method - ECM). وقد أوضـحت النتائج أن السبب الرئيس في خفض انبعاثات الکربون في الولايات المتحدة (دولة متقدمة) هو صافي التجارة الدولية. أما بالنسبة للصيـن ومصر- من الدول النامية- فنلاحظ أنهما ملاذ للتلوث، حيث إن صافي التجارة والاستثمار الأجنبـي يؤديان إلى زيادة الانبعاثات؛ مما يوضـح تسرب الکربون من الولايات المتحدة إلى دول أخـرى، وکذلک تدعم النتائج فرضية منحنى «کوزنتس» البيئي. Climate Change is one of the most important issues facing our planet, the concerns are growing under the global trading system. trade benefits may generate considerable pressure on the environment because of more trade and economic activity would lead to an increase in energy consumption. Carbon dioxide is the main source of greenhouse effect and captures great attention in the recent years, are most of the emissions comes from fossil fuels consumption. Recently, China has shown significant growth in emissions, accounting for 28% of global emissions in 2013. It also became the world’s first exporter of industrial products, and the world’s biggest emitter of emissions, while the emissions of USA decreased from 5702 (Million tonnes) in 2005 to 5119 (Mt) in 2013. That leads to raise the questionif the USA emissions have been decreased as a result of implementions the commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, or as a result of transfering carbon-intensive activities to developing countries, and conversion to import rather than export these products. This paper is trying to measure the impact of trade openness, economic development, foreign direct investment, energy consumption and urbanization on environment,using Time -Series data over the period 1982-2013 in the United States, China and Egypt. The Engle -Granger Two-Step Model is used to test the long-runand short-run relationships between the variables by applying the Error-Correction Model (ECM). The results showed that the main reason for reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the United States is net trade,while in China and Egypt are a pollution haven of direty products as net trade and foreign direct investment lead to increase emissions. In addition, The results support environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis.

Carbon pricing has been the most prominent climate change mitigation policy for the EU since the launch of its emissions trading system (ETS) in 2005. Since then, the context of international climate policy as well as of the socio-political and economical context of decarbonisation has changed considerably. The 2015 Paris Agreement engages virtually every country unlike its predecessor, while non-carbon pricing policies have led to rapid cost reductions in renewables, even if other sectors (particularly in energy-intensive industry) have not seen similar developments. This paper examines how the role of carbon pricing in the EU climate policy mix has evolved from its beginnings as a means to help achieve modest targets under the Kyoto Protocol, to a policy instrument increasingly augmented by a wider policy mix aimed at reaching no net emissions of greenhouse gases by mid-century.

This paper focuses on the process of convergence in per capita CO2 emissions that would occur if the measures taken by the European Union to meet the Kyoto Protocol commitments had been effective. We apply a time series and cross-sectional analysis to test for the existence of convergence among countries and for different economic sectors. The sample covers data for the 28 member countries from 1960 to 2012. The results show weak absolute convergence across countries but clear evidence of conditional convergence, with GDP, the weight of industrial sector and the use of renewable energies being the main drivers of divergence. Concerning sectors, there is an increase of emissions in the agricultural sector, but a reduction in the industrial and energy sectors. Different patterns arise in the energy subsectors where manufacturing and electricity notably reduced their emissions while the transport sector increased them in all countries., Este documento enfoca o processo de convergência das emissões de CO2 per capita que ocorreria se as medidas adotadas pela União Europeia para cumprir os compromissos do Protocolo de Kyoto tivessem sido efetivas. Aplicamos uma série temporal e uma análise transversal para testar a existência de convergência entre países e para diferentes setores econômicos. A amostra cobre dados para os 28 países membros de 1960 a 2012. Os resultados mostram uma convergência absoluta fraca entre os países, mas evidências claras de convergência condicional, sendo o PIB, o peso do setor industrial e o uso de energias renováveis os principais fatores de divergência. No que diz respeito aos setores, há um aumento das emissões no setor agrícola, mas uma redução nos setores industrial e de energia. Diferentes padrões surgem nos subsetores de energia, onde a produção e a eletricidade reduziram notavelmente suas emissões, enquanto o setor de transporte aumentou em todos os países. Palavras-chave: Convergência; emissões de CO2; União Europeia.

Since the Kyoto Protocol Agreement 1997, the global community is striving towards implementing renewable energy practices and thereby contribute to the sustainability of growth. Committing to this ...

We study countries’ compliance with the targets pledged in international climate-change agreements and the impact of those agreements and specific climate laws and policies on greenhouse-gas emissions and economic outcomes. To do so, we compile and codify data on international agreements and measures enacted at the national and sub-national levels. We find that compliance with targets has been mixed. Still, countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol or the Copenhagen Accord experienced significant reductions in emissions when compared to non-signatories. Having quantifiable targets led to further reductions. Effects from the Paris Agreement are not yet evident in the data. Carbon taxes and the introduction of emission-trading schemes led to material reductions in emissions. Other climate laws or policies do not appear to have had, individually, a material effect on emissions. The impact on GDP growth or inflation from most measures was largely insignificant. Overall, much more ambitious targets would be needed to offset the impact of economic and population growth on emissions and contain the expansion of the stock of gases.

We investigated the effect of agreements related to climate change on bilateral trade, using the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) estimator on a large dataset that requires computing high-dimensional fixed effects. This study develops the concordance between commodities based on harmonized systems (HS) and technologies defined by both international and cooperative patent classifications (IPC/CPC). Using the OECD ENV-TECH classification, covering 169 exporting countries and 179 importing countries worldwide from 1991 to 2019, we determined the relationship between HS commodities and IPC/CPC climate change technologies. The main findings show that, first, the Kyoto Protocol has increased international bilateral trade in the climate change industry, while the Montreal Protocol has led to the opposite effect. In addition, the impact of environmental stringency on international bilateral trade in climate-related industries was negative and significant, refuting the Porter Hypothesis. This result was consistent within the trade between the convention countries. Therefore, national and industrial perspectives are relative, and voluntary climate mitigation methods should be applied, considering the areas where carbon reduction is relatively difficult. In other words, the conventions and policies must shift to a global paradigm in environmental protection and a more inclusive approach, with recognition of diversity in governance types.

Since 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was signed, the era of renewable energy has begun. Due to the growth of its share in the total energy production and consumption, the world community is making efforts towards the transition to sustainable development. Developed and developing countries have significantly increased production and consumption of renewable energy in absolute terms trying to join this initiative. The purpose of this work is to study the impact of changes in the share of total production and consumption of renewable energy on the economic growth and CO 2 emissions. Secondary data of the World Bank, the countries that invest the most in renewable energy (the USA, China, the European Union) is used and a comparison with Ukraine, Russian Federation and general global indicators covering the period 1990–2015 is made. Modeling of the influence of the share of production and consumption of renewable energy sources in the total volume in the studied countries on the level of economic growth and CO 2 emissions using economic and mathematical modeling is carried out. Linear regression models of the studied countries and the world are estimated. The hypothesis on a link between economic growth and development of renewable energy has been confirmed. The results reveal that depending on the country under the research the level and nature of the impact of increasing the share of production and consumption of renewable energy on economic growth differs significantly and depends on a number of political and economic factors.

The amount of CO2 embodied in trade has substantially increased over the last decades. We contribute to understanding the reasons for this evolution by studying the trends and some drivers of the carbon intensity of trade over the period 1995–2009 in 41 countries and 35 sectors. Our empirical analysis relies on the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) to compute embodied carbon emissions. Our main findings are the following. First, average emission intensity of traded goods is higher than average emission intensity of final demand. Second, relatively “dirty” countries tend to specialize in emission-intensive sectors. Third, the share of goods produced in emission-intensive countries is rising. Finally, we find that coal abundance (measured as fuel rent and controlling for reverse causality) leads both to a specialization in “dirty” sectors and to an increase in emissions per output when controlling for sector structure, which amounts to a fossil fuel endowment effect. These findings suggest trade liberalization may increase global emissions and therefore highlight the importance of considering trade when designing CO2 reduction strategies.

This paper analyzes the factors explaining the slight decrease of CO2 emissions in the European Union (EU), recorded during the last period. With a focus on 12 EU countries, we apply a panel data analysis over the period 1990 to 2017 and we investigate the impact of renewable energy share in energy production, and the role of EU environmental regulations, in explaining the level of CO2 emissions. Our static and dynamic panel data analysis points to a negative impact of an increased renewable energy share on CO2 emissions, while there is no clear evidence about the role of environmental regulations. It appears that the 2020 climate and energy package contributed to the reduction of pollution level, while the ratification of the Kyoto protocol by the EU countries had no significant influence. At the same time, our findings validate the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis and the pollution halo (PH) hypothesis, showing that foreign companies export eco-friendly technologies. Our results prove to be robust regarding the use of static fixed and random effects models, of two-stage least square models and the use of difference and system generalized method of moments (GMM) frameworks.

The paper revisits the dynamic effect of trade openness on environmental quality in South Africa by employing a fresh proxy of trade openness suggested by Squalli and Wilson (The World Economy 34:1745–1770, 2011) over the period 1960–2016. Contrary to the previous literature, the new proxy is constructed to take into consideration both South Africa’s trade share of its GDP and its relative size of trade in relation to the world trade in a specified period of time. Adopting this novel approach to capture openness, the study applies the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test for cointegration approach to investigate the long-run association between trade openness and environmental quality. Our findings show that the results of the long run are materially different from those of the short run. While trade openness has a significantly beneficial impact on CO2 emissions in the short run, it has a measurably detrimental consequence on it in the long run. These findings are new to the literature and contrast with the previous studies. While confirming the existence of an inverted U-shaped curve that validates the existence of environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for South Africa, our results are further supported by the non-linear ARDL model, which reveals evidence of asymmetric pass-through effects of changes in trade openness on CO2 emissions. This paper suggests that South Africa’s policymakers must continue to improve trade policy reform with complementary policies to create a less carbon-intensive environment and promote lasting value for reductions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and constantly support the establishment of greener technologies that ultimately lower CO2 emissions.

This paper develops a fixed effect model to evaluate the effect of renewable energy policy using a panel dataset covering 29 countries during the period of 2000–2015. The renewable energy policy system in this paper includes seven aggregate policies and twelve specific ones. The empirical results indicate that four of seven aggregate policies, including fiscal and financial incentives, market-based instruments, policy support, and research, development and deployment, are demonstrated to be significant to the improvement of renewable energy capacity. Meanwhile, three of twelve specific policies, including price policy, grants and subsidies, and strategic planning, have positive effects on renewable energy development. This paper assesses the aggregate and specific policies in the same analysis framework, and the empirical results determined that synergy effects existed among specific policies. The empirical results also indicate that the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005 has had positive impacts on renewable energy development in typical countries.

How effective was the Kyoto protocol? International Environmental Agreements (IEA) have been on the rise over the past four decades; however, thus far their effectiveness is controversial. In view of the conflicting results found in the related literature, this paper addresses its effectiveness by utilizing for the first time the generalized synthetic control method (GSCM) to compare the emissions of the industrialized countries with a “No- Kyoto” counterfactual scenario that represents the expected emissions in the absence of the protocol. This method facilitates a robust comparison between treated and control countries as done by Almer and Winkler (2017) and account for the multiple treated units as done by Grunewald and Martinez-Zarzoso (2016), so as to capture the collective nature of the protocol. Results show that the protocol was successful in reducing the emissions of the ratifying countries approximately by 7% below the emissions expected under a “No-Kyoto” scenario, confirming the importance of accounting for the collective nature of the agreement.

Renewable energy consumption has been promoted to mitigate climate change problems under various schemes, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. A country's choice of energy resources depends on the balancing of economic growth and environmental degradation, which will be closely related to its development stage. This study examines how the relationship between renewable energy consumption and carbon emissions is associated with the development stage by applying a panel cointegration analysis to 107 countries during the period from 1990 to 2013. The analysis shows the clear differences between the groups of low- and high-income countries. For low-income countries, renewable energy consumption is positively and negatively associated with carbon emissions and output, respectively. However, for high-income countries, renewable energy consumption is negatively and positively associated with carbon emissions and output, respectively. These results have important implications for policymakers, since the discrepancies in these relationships mean that a country's renewable energy policies should be highly compatible with its development stage.

Since the adoption of the Kyoto protocol in 1997 and its entry into force in 2005, as well its aftermath such as the Doha amendment and Paris agreement, national policies have become more conscious of the usage of clean energy, mostly the different forms of renewable energy and nuclear energy. Ratifying countries and signatories had committed themselves to binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse emissions by 8% with respect to 1990 levels until 2012, also based on the particular contribution to global emissions from each country. This paper examines the integrational properties of clean energy consumption from eight emerging economies which are also high greenhouse gas emitters. The empirical results show that the clean energy consumption is stationarity for Brazil and Philippines by using a quantile unit root test without smooth breaks (Koenker and Xiao, 2004). However, after capturing the smooth breaks (Bahmani-Oskooee et al., 2018), we find the clean energy consumption of China, Pakistan and Thailand are stationary. The time-varying deterministic trend with smooth breaks is more fitted to the path of clean energy consumption in comparison to the deterministic trend without smooth breaks. The paper suggests economic insights useful for policy making.

This study aims to investigate the validity of the pollution haven hypothesis for the global panel consisting of 29 countries (Bahrain, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, China, Japan, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Korea rep, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, IR Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam are taken as the sample of this study) with energy consumption, economic growth and trade openness as additional determinants of environmental degradation over the period 1994–2014. To make the panel data analysis more homogenous, we also investigate the validity of the PHH for a number of sub‐panels. These sub‐panels are constructed based on the sub‐regions of Asia. In this way, we end up with six Asian panels; namely, Global panel, West Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asian panels. Based on the IPS and ADF chi‐square unit root test and Pedroni cointegration test results, all variables were found to be first difference stationary and cointegrated. On applying FMOLS, the long‐run results suggest the presence of the pollution haven hypothesis only in East Asian panel. In turn, foreign direct investment reduces environmental degradation, thus rejecting the validity of the pollution haven hypothesis (PHH) in the Southeast Asian panel which is found to be negatively linked to CO emissions. Moreover, energy consumption seems to be the main determinant of carbon emissions and GDP growth has a positive impact on it in all panels except West Asia. Lastly, East Asian countries have followed the Kyoto protocol in order to reduce their emissions level.

This paper examines the effect of economic growth and the association of environmental degradation on economies’ technological change and technological catch-up. Using a conditional nonparametric frontier analysis to a sample of 73 economies over the time period 1980–2014, empirical evidence of the examined relationship is provided both under full and partial frontiers in the constant and variable returns to scale (VRS) models. Specifically, the newly proposed time-dependent conditional nonparametric frontier estimators have been applied. In our case the time-dependent conditional efficiency estimators allow us to model directly the effects of growth and time on economies’ estimated performance without requiring any specification of the production functional form and without assuming the separability condition between time, economic growth and the support of inputs and outputs. The overall results reveal that the efficiency results of full and partial frontiers tend to lead to the same results, except in the cases of full VRS models where energy use and carbon dioxide emissions are incorporated as an additional input and output, respectively. The results demonstrate that countries with a higher environmental efficiency are those that have signed the first agreement between nations (Kyoto Protocol) to mandate country-by-country reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, while countries that have not signed are relatively inefficient. Ultimately, the empirical findings also suggest that the effect of economic growth is determined by economies’ development stage and geographical region.

The relationship between CO2 emissions, the main gas responsible for global warming, and economic growth is among the most studied themes of environmental economics. Reducing overall emissions while keeping a high pace of economic development is at the heart of the sustainable development concept. When emissions grow less rapidly than GDP environmental economists speak of relative decoupling; if emissions even decrease relative to the pace of economic growth, then decoupling is absolute. Assessing these options requires an empirical analysis of the emissions-GDP relationship. The study of this nexus has special importance for developed countries, given their historical responsibility towards global warming. At the same time, in the last decades, the same countries have been at the forefront of the fight against climate change in terms of emissions-reduction efforts. By applying cutting-edge econometric techniques, this paper aims to investigate the decoupling options, if any, for a group of European economies which can be considered as pioneers in pursuing the sustainable development goals. This question gains further importance considering that some recent studies have found positive GDP elasticities of emissions for certain developed countries, which may be seen as a cause of concern for the sustainable development path of such countries. Unlike the bulk of the literature, in this paper, we allow the income elasticity of emissions – a critical indicator for the study of decoupling – to vary over time. The reason is that the elasticity might change through the time due to the factors affecting the main drivers of the CO2 emissions. We use a time-varying coefficients cointegration approach to investigate the CO2 emissions-GDP relationship for 12 Western European countries over a long time period ranging from 1861 to 2015. Our main finding is that the income elasticity of CO2 emissions is positive in all investigated countries. In addition, we find evidence in favor of relative decoupling in 8 out of the 12 European countries. This is in line with the fact that the selected European countries have shown more determination in adopting carbon reduction policies before and after the Kyoto protocol period and toward the Paris agreement compared to other leading economies such as China, United States, and Russia. For the remaining 4 cases, the income elasticity of CO2 emissions is in excess of unity. This can be considered as a call for policymakers to take quick and relevant measures to mitigate emissions level without harming the economic development.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol has two main objectives: Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and contributing to sustainable development (SD) in developing countries. The empirical evidence indicates that the first goal has been fulfilled; however, the literature mostly provides ex-ante evidence regarding the second goal. This paper contributes to the literature by assessing the ex-post quantitative effect that CDM projects have had on SD (employment and monetary welfare) in Peru, a country ranked among the most important CDM investment host countries worldwide. The econometric model estimates the direct and indirect effects of the CDM projects’ investments on Peruvian households’ monetary welfare for 2011–2015. Our results suggest that CDM investments had a slight effect on household consumption expenditure and had no effect neither on employment nor in poverty alleviation. Our findings suggest the need to strengthen CDM’s institutional framework by identifying key development definitions and indicators.

We address international convergence in carbon dioxide emissions per capita and per value added derived from emission inventories based on production and consumption patterns. We propose a Bayesian structural model that accounts for heteroscedasticity and endogeneity between emissions and economic growth, and tests for the existence of group-specific convergence via shrinkage priors. We find evidence for country-specific conditional convergence in all emission inventories, implying a half-life of 2.7–3.1 years for production-based emissions and 3.6–4.7 years for consumption-based emissions. When testing for global convergence without allowing for individual-specific convergence paths, the half-life of $$\hbox {CO}_2$$ per capita increases to 15–26 years, whereas emission intensities show a half-life of 44–45 years. Our results highlight the current incompatibility between emission targets and economic growth and the need for faster diffusion of green technologies. Moreover, there is no evidence for specific convergence dynamics in the European Union, the OECD, or the countries that are subject to binding emission constraints specified in the Kyoto Protocol. The institutional frameworks implemented in industrialized countries did not induce faster convergence among developed economies.

We examine the role of carbon risk in dividend policy, and how its effect varies between imputation (paying franked dividends) and classical (paying unfranked dividends) tax environments in the unique experimental setting in Australia. We find that the probability of paying dividend and dividend payout ratio is lower for firms in the highest-emitting industries (polluters) relative to non-polluters, subsequent to ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. While the post-Kyoto reduction in the likelihood of paying dividend is not significantly different, the reduction in payout ratio is smaller in the imputation environment than classical tax system, highlighting the significance of imputation tax environment only on the impact of carbon risk on dividend payout rather than decision to pay. We further document that the post-Kyoto reduction in dividend payout of polluters is driven by their relative increase in earnings uncertainty. The evidence suggests a causal influence of carbon risk on firm dividend policy.

Figuring out the convergence and persistence of per capita CO2 emissions matters much for environmental policy makers in both developed and developing countries. The Kyoto Protocol aims at avoiding threat from climate warming for human beings. CO2 emissions have been viewed as the main cause of climate change in recent decades. Thus, loads of empirical studies contribute to investigate the convergence of per capita CO2 emissions by implementing various econometric models including as many sample countries as possible. By applying a battery of univariate unit root tests, quantile unit root test, and a newly developed quantile unit root test with Fourier function, we re-investigate the convergence, mean-reverting properties and asymmetric behavior of per capita CO2 emissions in 21 OECD countries. The findings show that per capita CO2 emissions of Austria, Finland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the US perform converging as a whole from the perspective of the FQKS statistics. Besides, mean-reverting properties are identified for Austria, Finland, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the US when economy is in recession. Finally, asymmetric behaviors of per capita CO2 emissions are detected at selected quantiles. All of the results provide impressive environmental economic implications for policy makers.

Transportation is one of the significant sources of global anthropogenic emissions, generating about 14% of global Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) with the largest contribution from ground transportation followed by air and water transport. However, international climate agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol or Paris Agreement focused mostly on the regulation of production emissions without considering transport emissions in policy regulations. In this paper I analyze the effects of global carbon pricing on international trade and modal choice in the transportation of goods between countries, and resulting changes in international transport emissions. For this purpose I modify the Energy-environmental version of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP-E) model to allow for substitution among different modes of transport. I find that a global GHG tax increases the competitiveness of transport services exports from the most developed countries which exhibit relatively low economic emissions intensities, while having a negative effect of services exports from most developing regions, which have relatively higher emissions rates per dollar of transport services. The findings also indicate that when international transport emissions and modal substitution are considered in global emissions regulation policies there is significant impact on the expected reduction in global emissions and global warming.

In our study, we examine whether spatial spillover effects exist for greenhouse gas emission efficiency for 38 European countries between 2005 and 2014. We find that inefficiencies of other countries would lead to lower efficiency levels for a country. This negative inefficiency spillover effect goes down till 2008 then goes up till 2011, then stays relatively stable after 2011. Any strategy to reduce inefficiencies of other countries could potentially improve the efficiency levels. We find that human development index shows significant positive impact on greenhouse gas emission efficiency levels. In particular, one standard deviation increase in human development index would lead to a 11.12 percentage points increase in the greenhouse gas emission efficiencies on average. Different countries show different efficiency levels and efficiency growth patterns over time. However, the pattern of spatial spillover is quite similar among all countries over time.

From the Kyoto Protocol to the Copenhagen Conference and the Paris Agreement, eco-environmental problems have gradually become a matter of common concern worldwide. Eco-efficiency (EE) is an essential indicator for measuring levels of sustainable development. This study uses an epsilon-based measure (EBM) model with undesirable outputs to evaluate the EEs of 30 Chinese provinces during the research period 2008 to 2017, and a spatial Durbin model (SDM) to search for the impact factors of EE. The results indicate that most provinces in China have a low EE level. The EE value of the eastern area is higher than are those for the central, western, or northeastern areas. The EE in China as a whole demonstrates an inverted V-shaped trend with a high point in 2011. The SDM shows that economic development level, foreign trade dependence, and technological progress exert significant positive effects on EE, while population density exerts significant negative influences on EE. This paper provides scientific bases for the formulation of policies resulting in sustainable development.

Financial support from ECO2009-7616, ECO2012-31962, 2014SGR-142, the Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (SEV-2011-0075), ICREA Academia We consider issue-externality games in which agents can cooperate on multiple issues and externalities are present both within and across issues, that is, the amount a coalition receives in one issue depends on how the players are organized on all the issues. Examples of such games are several Örms competing in multiple markets, and countries negotiating both a trade agreement (through, e.g., WTO) and an environmental agreement (e.g., Kyoto Protocol). We propose a way to extend (Shapley) values for partition function games to issue-externality games. We characterize our proposal through axioms that extend the Shapley axioms to our more general environment. The solution concept that we propose can be applied to many interesting games, including intertemporal situations where players meet sequentially.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M Carbon leakage is the effect of emissions transferring to certain countries due to others having a stricter climate policy. This phenomenon is shown to have undercut the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol. Considering the increasingly globalised nature of the world economy, carbon leakage may have an even greater potential under the Paris Agreement some fifteen years later. Although a more global approach to combatting climate change, the Paris Agreement is susceptible to leakage because of its lack of policy harmonization and enforcement mechanisms. Here we perform the first quantitative analysis of the potential for carbon leakage under Paris, using the GTAP-E general equilibrium model of the world economy with energy and carbon emissions to analyse leakage effects under six scenarios. Two of these scenarios analyse regions implementing climate policy in isolation, two greater participation, but still not harmonized, global Paris Agreement policy, and a further two analyse the effect of a US withdrawal from the agreement. Both cases are considered with and without the US withdrawal. Our analysis demonstrates that there is potential for significant carbon leakage effects, in line with the rates produced from studies on the Kyoto Protocol. Depending on model elasticities, we find medium carbon leakage in the range of 1-9% (with a central estimate of 3-4%) under co-ordinated Paris Agreement policy across countries, compared to high leakage of 8-31% when countries operate in isolation. However, scenarios where the US withdraws from the agreement result in roughly doubling of leakage rates, in the range of 3-16% (central estimate 7%), which demonstrates the vulnerability of the Paris Agreement in its current form. To limit leakage effects greater policy co-ordination to achieve consistent implicit carbon prices is needed across countries.

This research work is devoted to the issue of studying the key risks of switching to renewable energy sources. The relevance of the topic of work is determined by the fact that, according to climatologists [5], climate change, which has a negative impact on the environment, is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2). For this reason, measures to prevent or reduce greenhouse gas emissions are at the heart of the energy transition. International treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement lay the foundations for global action to combat climate change and implement a fourth energy transition. The energy transition is characterized by a number of incentives and barriers. Despite the fact that there are many scenarios for the development of the global energy sector by 2050, the expected transformations of the energy market lead to a significant redistribution of the ratio of the shares of hydrocarbon sources and renewable energy sources [16]. The trend towards fossil fuels is on the rise. These transformations in the market are determined not only by the climate agenda, but also by the concept of sustainable economic development.

The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol generated about 4.3 billion Assigned Amount Units (aaus) and about 180 million Certified Emission Reductions (cers) for carry-over by Annex i states and potential use as ‘overachievements’ or offsets to discount emissions under ndcs. The second commitment period may generate additional carry-over units, and there is an estimated ‘dormant’ amount of about 4.6 billion cers that could be issued from ongoing cdm projects. To rely on these units risks upsetting the process of trust-building necessary to increase ambition under the Paris Agreement. This article questions the legality of carry-overs but finds that a textual interpretation of the current legal framework under both treaties leaves the matter unresolved. With a more refined legal interpretation, based on the principles of environmental integrity and sound accounting under the Paris Agreement, the article re-evaluates aaus and cers under the Agreement, by relying on insights from a social theory of value and the critical studies literature on the political economy of carbon markets. The conclusion is that aaus cannot be used under the ndc accounting framework, as their formal value of 1 Mt CO2 eq. under the Kyoto Protocol is considerably diminished under the Agreement. As for cers, their value depends on different social realities related to their issuance. States or the cma should adopt transparent criteria to select the cers that are worth transitioning pursuant to the Article 6.4 mechanism. The same conceptual framework of value-attribution can also inform the design and operation of the Article 6 mechanisms and their units in order to attain higher environmental integrity and sound accounting for ndcs.