Empirical Study on the Determinants of CO2 Emissions: Evidence from OECD Countries

Iwata, Hiroki and Okada, Keisuke and Samreth, Sovannroeun (2010): Empirical Study on the Determinants of CO2 Emissions: Evidence from OECD Countries.

Abstract

This paper empirically investigates the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for CO2 emissions in the cases of 11 OECD countries by taking into account the role of nuclear energy in electricity production. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration is employed as the estimation method. Our results indicate that energy consumption has a positive impact on CO2 emissions in most countries in the study. However, the impact of trade is not statistically significant. The results provide evidence for a role of nuclear power in reducing CO2 emissions only in some countries. Additionally, although the estimated long-run coefficients of income and its square satisfy the EKC hypothesis in Finland, Japan, Korea and Spain, only Finland’s EKC turning point is inside the sample period of the study, providing poor evidence in support of the EKC hypothesis.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: CO2; Environment; EKC; OECD; ARDL
• Subjects: Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q53 - Air Pollution ; Water Pollution ; Noise ; Hazardous Waste ; Solid Waste ; Recycling; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q51 - Valuation of Environmental Effects; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q4 - Energy > Q43 - Energy and the Macroeconomy

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