Search

This study aims to examine the impact of energy poverty on the aggregate and disaggregate material footprint components such as biomass, fossil fuel, metal ores and non-metallic minerals while considering the economic growth and tourism development during 2000–2014 for the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). By applying econometric tools, the study confirms a positive and significant impact of energy poverty on aggregate material footprint and its components. The same finding has been reached for tourism development. Moreover, this study finds a U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) for all indicators used for material footprints. Based on the findings, this study proposes a set of policies for energy poverty alleviation to attain a sustainable environment and inclusive economic growth in the BRICS region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decoupling economic growth and carbon emissions is essential for sustainable growth. However, the impact of ICT agglomeration, especially its long-term impact on decoupling, has received little attention. Drawing on the Tapio decoupling model and dynamic decoupling path theory, this study examines the short-term and long-term effects of ICT agglomeration on decoupling by using a panel data set for 257 cities in China from 2003 to 2017. The results show that most cities are in a state of weak decoupling (253/257) and on an intensive dynamic decoupling path (192/257). Our empirical analyses confirm that ICT agglomeration negatively impacts the short-term decoupling trend but positively impacts the long-term decoupling path. The mediating mechanism analysis indicates that ICT agglomeration affects decoupling by driving ICT infrastructure investment, promoting green technology innovation, and stimulating consumption of ICT equipment. Green technology innovation significantly drives decoupling in both the short-term and long-term impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the use of different environmental proxies, the economic and financial development (FD)-environmental quality (EQ) nexus is still enigmatic. In this regard, a new composite environmental quality index (CEQI) is used to holistically represent EQ. Moreover, the Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) method is applied to estimate the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and the financial development Kuznets Curve (FKC) hypotheses using data from 13 members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The findings reveal that economic growth in the first regime positively affects CEQI while having a negative effect after exceeding the threshold and entering the second regime. Also, FD positively affects CEQI for the first regime and has a negative influence for the second regime. Other factors such as energy consumption and composite trade share (CTS) in both the first and second regimes have a negative effect on CEQI. Accordingly, several environmental quality-improving policies are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional model of factor-driven economic growth can no longer be maintained due to an increasing demand to save energy and reduce emissions and a rapid rise in the cost of related factors. The concept of green total factor productivity (GTFP) has emerged as an essential component of high-quality economic growth; consequently, how to boost GTFP through the development of technical advancement has become an important question in recent years. An improved CES production function of labor, capital, and energy is created using the theoretical framework for biased technological growth as its foundation. Subsequently, the mechanisms resulting from the synergy of factor structure, factor efficiency and biased technological progress (BTP) on GTFP are theoretically deduced and empirically analyzed. The conclusion shows that the types of technical advancement are mainly net labor-enhancing and net energy-enhancing technical advancement in China from 2001 to 2017. Due to the biased effect of technical advancement, the relative comparison of the three elements is determined predominantly by excessive capital investment and less by labor and energy. Factor-enhancing technical advancement led to the growth of GTFP, while the synergistic effect of BTP, factor structure and factor efficiency hindered the growth of GTFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on unique firm-level microdata, this study adopts the conditional logit model to empirically evaluate the impact of the environmental tax on the siting of foreign-invested manufacturing enterprises. We also explore the trade-offs of the environmental tax by assessing its economic costs and benefits. This study finds that the environmental tax has a statistically significant and negative impact on the siting of foreign-invested enterprises, as verified by a series of robustness checks. This result implies a trade-off of the environmental tax, reducing pollutant emissions at the expense of damaging economic growth. Heterogeneous analysis finds that the siting is remarkably more sensitive for foreign-invested enterprises that are sole-venture, in high-polluting industries, small-scale, or hosted by developing countries. The other trade-off is outlined: although the environmental tax reduces the number of newly registered foreign-invested enterprises, it brings some economic benefits by making the structure of foreign investment cleaner and more advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many regions or countries seek to transition to a low-carbon economy, but there is ambiguity about how carbon emissions change with economic growth. This paper captures characteristics of carbon emissions in China using the Tapio Method. To detect driving factors of carbon emissions in economic growth, we adopt the Log-Mean Divisia Index decomposition method. The results of the paper are as follows: (1) Economic growth in most regions of China has outpaced the growth rate of carbon emissions, showing the characteristics of decoupling. (2) Metropolitan cities have a greater impact on the level of decoupling in neighboring provinces and municipalities. (3) The decoupling of carbon emissions from economic growth is caused by declining energy intensity in China. (4) The energy mix and industrial structure have little impact on the growth rate of carbon emissions. In addition, some policy implications are summarized according to the findings of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding of strategic environmental assessment's (SEA) influence on low-carbon development (LCD) is critical as societies strive to decarbonize without jeopardizing economic growth. As best practice perceptions are still evolving, plausible conceptual and analytical frameworks are needed. This paper offers a conceptual clarification and proposes a framework for analyzing environmental reports. We employed a multi-phased, mixed-methods approach. The first phase involved an integrative literature review that combined theoretical insights from LCD and transition management with SEA's procedural aspects. The extracted data was used to develop an initial framework in the second phase. The third phase utilized an international case study and expert consultations to illustrate, validate and refine the framework. The resulting framework comprises five review areas to be verified by a series of review questions reflecting good practice. It could assist SEA researchers, practitioners, responsible authorities, policymakers and environmental agencies better understand, prioritize and address the issue of LCD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the impact of economic growth targets on green total factor productivity (GTFP) based on a panel Tobit model and two manual datasets of 30 Chinese provinces from 2002 to 2019. We find that economic growth targets significantly inhibit GTFP, which is more pronounced in provinces that have high incentives when setting targets, use hard constraints when announcing targets, and fulfill their targets. In addition, we find that economic growth targets inhibit GTFP by undermining economic efficiency and aggravating environmental pollution. Moreover, the command-controlled environmental regulations weaken the inhibitory effect on GTFP, while market-motivated environmental regulations aggravate this inhibitory effect. Our findings confirm that the promotion assessment system based on economic performance leads to the irrationality of local governments in establishing economic growth targets, and the local governments pursue economic growth at the cost of development quality and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governments of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration have introduced a series of environmental policies to ameliorate pollution problems, but there are concerns that such a move can negatively impact the economy. In this article, panel data for 13 prefecture-level cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region from 2003 to 2018 are used to investigate the influencing mechanism of environmental regulation on economic growth. The empirical results indicate an inverted "U"-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental regulation. In a sense, the non-linear relationship implies that the Porter hypothesis and the compliance cost hypothesis apply to different levels of environmental stringency, respectively, which results in an empirical supplement to the existing theoretical framework. Furthermore, energy intensity and industrial structure are valid transmission paths for the economic effect of environmental regulation, despite their opposite directions. Overall, a win–win situation of economic prosperity and ecological improvement can be achieved through the implementation of appropriate environmental regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to evaluate the impacts of international tourism development and green technology innovation on economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions in the top 10 GDP countries between 1995 and 2018. Our preliminary findings reject the preposition of data normality, which instigate us to apply a novel method of moments quantile regression. The overall results suggest that international tourism development facilitates economic growth and increases carbon dioxide emissions asymmetrically across the different levels of economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions. Specifically, the economic growth impacts are relatively large for the comparatively more developed nations while the adverse environmental impacts are relatively larger for the comparatively less-polluted nations; thus, the tourism led-economic growth hypothesis is verified. On the other hand, green technology innovation is found to facilitate economic growth and mitigate carbon dioxide emissions, especially in the context of the relatively more developed and polluted economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to revisit the evidence of co-movement and lead-lag nexus between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth in G7 countries over a period of two centuries by using the wavelet coherence analysis. The key findings reveal (i) a cyclical relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and GDP per capita, which implies that during the upswing phase of business cycles, economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions both grow, but the latter can be predicted using GDP as an indicator function at the 1- to 2-year scale. (ii) A time-scale bidirectional causality between carbon dioxide emissions and GDP per capita. This implies that carbon dioxide emissions cannot be reduced without adversely affecting economic growth. Further, the finding also implies a rapid adoption of alternative clean energy sources to reduce carbon dioxide emissions without depressing economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, emerging, developed, and developing economies have placed great emphasis on the need to attain environmental sustainability while achieving economic expansion. In an effort to offer possible policy options toward the attainment of sustainable development, this study examines the effect of economic growth on carbon emissions mitigation. Yearly panel data for 44 countries comprised of emerging, developed, and developing economies from 1990 to 2017 is used. To address the gap in the literature, this nexus is examined on seven layers of carbon emissions. This study reveals reliable and robust empirical findings with the use of system and difference general method of moments, random and fixed effects using the Durbin-Wu-Hausman test model, and feasible general least-squares estimation approaches. Our findings indicate that for developed economies, carbon emissions by the power industry have been mitigated and increased domestic credit to the private sector leads to a decrease in all layers of carbon emissions. Nevertheless, gross national income increase negatively impacts emissions by the transport sector. In emerging and developing economies, increased domestic credit to the private sector increases emissions by the power industry, transport sector, buildings, other combustion industries, and other non-major sectors. For all economies, an increase in domestic savings leads to an increase in all layers of carbon emissions. Compared with prior studies that simply focus on gross domestic product and total carbon emissions, our study provides detailed insights on the carbon emissions mitigation efforts by sector and economic group given the true drivers of economic expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial agglomeration and green economic growth have become a trend in global financial and economic development. This paper analyzes the impact mechanism of financial agglomeration on green economic growth from two angles: growth promotion and energy conservation/emission reduction. Based on the Slacks Based Model-Data Envelopment Analysis (SBM-DEA) of undesired outputs, the green economic growth efficiency of 30 regions in China from 2008 to 2017 was measured. The study uses a spatial measurement model and finds that financial agglomeration has a significant positive effect on green economic growth. The specific manifestation is that with a 1% increase in the level of financial agglomeration, the productivity of green total factor increases by about 0.1837% and 0.0964% green economic growth in neighboring areas. Further analysis shows that this improvement in green total factor productivity is mainly achieved through technological advancement that promotes coordinated economic growth, energy saving and emission reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important factor of global marine economic development, high-quality marine economic development depends on the important role played by environmental regulations in dealing with the relationship between marine economic growth and the reduction of marine environmental pollution. The Tapio decoupling model is used in this study to analyze the impact mechanism of environmental regulations on the decoupling between marine economic growth and marine environmental pollution (referred to as 'marine environment decoupling'). The results of the Tapio decoupling model demonstrate that China's marine economy has experienced fluctuations of 'growth connection'—'weak decoupling'—'negative decoupling of expansion'—'strong decoupling'—followed by 'growth connection'. The marine economy is gradually decoupling from marine pollution. The dynamic panel model results show that environmental regulation is nonlinearly related to the marine environment decoupling in a 'U' shape, and technological innovation and industrial structures have a 'U'-shaped regulating effect on the impact of environmental regulation on the marine environment decoupling. Furthermore, market-incentive and social-supervision environmental regulations can promote the marine environment decoupling. The three types of environmental regulations are ranked as follows: 'market-incentive environmental regulations > social-supervision environmental regulations > command environmental regulations' according to their clearly observable and varied roles. For these three major areas, environmental regulations are nonlinearly related to marine environment decoupling in the Pan-Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta, and linearly related to that of Bohai Bay. The results provide valuable references for understanding marine environment decoupling drivers and developing high-quality marine economy by considering the role of environmental regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have examined the correlation between haze pollution and economic growth, but few have focused on the bilateral causality and spatial dependence of the relationship simultaneously. With a recent, large sample of 285 Chinese prefecture-level cities over the period from 1998 to 2016, the dynamic relationship between economic growth and PM2.5 concentration was investigated in China and different geographical regions via the generalized spatial three-stage least squares method (GS3SLS). In addition, the spatial spillover effects of PM2.5 concentration and economic growth were explored, and the socioeconomic factors of the feedback effects of haze pollution on economic growth were identified. The results indicate the following: (1) There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and haze pollution, and haze pollution can, in turn, inhibit economic growth; (2) haze pollution and economic growth have an obvious spatial spillover effect that closely links neighboring areas, such that haze pollution has a clear and significant positive spatial spillover, and the spatial effect of economic growth depends on the regional characteristics; (3) environmental regulation has significance in explaining the inhibitory effect of haze pollution on economic growth; and (4) heterogeneity by geographical region and urban agglomeration is observed in the relationship between haze pollution and economic growth. Therefore, it is urgent to control haze pollution and avoid oversimplified and crude environmental regulation measures that may damage economic growth. Multiregional joint governance, systematic environmental regulation and technical environmental regulation should be strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the mechanism of how trade openness (TO) affects CO2 emissions via the scale and technique effects in the Asian region over the 1990-2015 period. The results obtained by employing cross-sectional augmented estimators indicate that: (i) trade-induced technology innovation (TI) reduces CO2 emissions; (ii) trade-facilitated economic growth results in higher CO2 emissions; (iii) the positive scale effect outweighs the negative technique effects. Furthermore, TO also produces a rebound effect of TI on emissions for Southern and Western Asia. The Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test reveals that TO Granger causes economic growth and TI, which in turn cause CO2 emissions. Besides, quadridirectional causality is observed between TO, TI, energy consumption and emissions, suggesting that these variables are mutually reinforcing. The findings suggest that the goals of environmental sustainability can be attained if the pace of national output growth is accompanied by environmental regulations and clean technology improvements when framing comprehensive trade policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the economic impacts of China's emissions trading system (ETS), implemented in 2013, in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita GDP. The methodology drew on a difference-in-differences (DID) method using dynamic panel data for 30 provincial regions. The estimation results show that implementing an ETS policy has statistically significant negative effects on economic growth. When considering the additional control variables, these effects are still statistically significant. Furthermore, these negative impacts increase over time with respect to both GDP and per capita GDP. The counterfactual tests confirm the robustness of our DID estimation results. The specific influence mechanism of China's ETS policy was finally discussed. Our findings provide a quantitative decision-making support for popularizing ETS policy in China. Based on our DID model, empirical investigations of the ETS policy, especially concerning economic growth in other regions would produce prolific contributions to the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the consequences of droughts on the aggregate economic growth and the growth of agriculture, industry and service sectors respectively. The benefits of financial relief post-drought and the efficacy of irrigation infrastructure is also statistically tested considering a sample of 45 districts in one of the largest states in India, Madhya Pradesh. A two-step GMM procedure is applied to balanced panel data for the period 2005 to 2012. Districts in the state face recurrent droughts, limited irrigation, and rainfall variability increases vulnerability to drought risks. Results show that drought adversely impacts on the growth rate of the agricultural sector and the aggregate economy. Post-drought financial relief has a positive and significant impact on the growth rate of the industrial sector and economic growth at the district level. The study contributes to the growing literature on disaster impact on growth by focusing on district-level assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates nonlinear effects of economic growth, globalization and ecological footprint on sustainable electricity consumption in Brazil using monthly time-series data from 1971M:01 to 2014M:12 and a nonlinear ARDL model. The results show that the effects of economic growth, globalization and ecological footprint on electricity consumption are asymmetric. A positive shock to economic growth increases electricity consumption more than a negative shock of the same magnitude causes electricity consumption to decline. In the case of globalization, the effect of a negative shock is stronger. Furthermore, the long-term effects of positive and negative shocks to the ecological footprint are negative but statistically significant only in the case of a positive shock while in the short term, the increasing effect of a positive shock to the ecological footprint is stronger than the reducing effect of a negative shock of the same magnitude. These findings are validated when globalization is disaggregated to economic, political and social dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic expansions and recessions have had a relevant influence on urbanization patterns, altering building cycles and depressing local housing markets. In regions with declining employment and wealth, the 2007 economic crisis has resulted in urban containment and inherent transformations in metropolitan structures and socioeconomic functions. This study aims at verifying whether urban growth spatial direction and intensity have changed during the 2007 economic crisis in Athens, the capital of Greece, based on a diachronic analysis (1990–2016) of indicators assessing population dynamics, building characteristics and land-use change. Urban growth rate in the study area was the highest over a period of economic expansion spanning from 1990 to 2006, decreasing largely in the subsequent decade, characterized by economic recession. Conversely, dispersed development as a proportion of total urban growth was the lowest during economic expansion, rising after 2007. With economic expansion, discontinuous urban growth concentrated in peri-urban districts. During recession, the same districts experienced a trend towards settlement re-densification, with new sprawled settlements expanding in marginal areas. Taken together, the empirical results of this study suggest that economic recession has promoted a moderate change in spatial direction and intensity of Athens' expansion, with distinct patterns of urban densification and dispersion depending on the specific local context. Our findings bring insights on the debate over post-crisis development of Mediterranean cities, suggesting that – without policy interventions – dispersed settlements will remain the dominant urbanization pattern in heterogeneous and fragmented metropolitan regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By committing to green procurement, the UK government has taken a key initial step towards sustainable development. But can this be put into practice? This policy analysis explores the background to green procurement in English local government through desk research and data collection, including interviews with five local authorities. It finds that green procurement has been encouraged through legislation, providing information and dismantling barriers, but momentum was lost following the Gershon review. Implementation of the new action plan would ensure green procurement becomes embedded within government procurement. New information to link up green procurement with organisational goals would also expand the horizons of green procurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]