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This study seeks to address pertinent economic and environmental issues associated with natural gas flaring, especially for the world's leading natural gas flaring economies (i.e. Russia, Iraq, Iran, the United States, Algeria, Venezuela, and Nigeria). By applying relevant empirical panel and country-specific approaches, the study found that fuel energy export positively impacts economic growth with elasticity of ~ 0.22 to ~ 0.24 for the panel examination. It is further revealed that environmental quality in the panel is hampered by increase in economic growth, gas flaring, fuel energy export, and urbanization. Moreover, for the country-wise inference, government quality desirably moderates economic and environmental aspects of gas flaring in Venezuela and Nigeria, and in Russia and Iran respectively. However, government quality moderates gas flaring to cause economic downturn in the USA. Additionally, economic growth increased with increase in urbanisation (in Iraq and the USA), gas flaring (in Iran and the USA), government quality (only in the USA), and fuel energy export (only in Algeria) while economic growth downturn is due to increase urbanisation in Russia and the USA, increase in fuel energy export in the USA, and increase in government quality in Russia. Meanwhile, environmental quality is worsened through intense carbon dioxide emission from increased urbanisation activity (in Iraq, Iran, Algeria, and Nigeria), increased fuel energy export (in Nigeria), increased natural gas flaring (in Algeria and Nigeria), increased GDP (in Russia, Iran, USA, Algeria, and Venezuela), and high government quality (in Iran). Interestingly, the result revealed that increase in GDP (in Nigeria), increase in urbanisation (in the USA), and increase in gas flaring (in Algeria and Nigeria) dampens environmental quality. Importantly, this study offers policy insight into sustainable approaches in natural gas production, government effectiveness, and regulatory quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary aim of this study is that whether Granger causality (GC) among CO2 emissions, energy consumption (EC) and economic growth (EG) in different regimes in Iran is similar and sustainable. We answer this question using Markov Switching Vector Autoregressive (MS-VAR) approach and the quarterly data from 1970Q1 to 2015Q4. The findings show that the causal relationship switches among these variables in different regimes. In the first regime, the results show a positive unilateral GC from EG to EC. In the second regime, the study shows a negative GC from EC to EG, and a positive causality from EG to EC, and a negative unilateral causality from CO2 emissions to EG. The results indicate no causality from EG and EC to CO2 emissions in the first and second regimes. The results further show that the probability of sustainability in this first regime, where the rate of EG is at a low level but the amounts of EC and CO2 emissions are at a high level, will be high compared to the second regime. These findings call for more attention to the various effects of these variables on each regime before the policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to investigate the impacts of economic growth, energy consumption, and the economic globalization process on ecological footprints in the top 10 countries that cause the highest carbon dioxide emissions in the world. The analyses were conducted on annual observations from 1970 to 2017 (a different range for each country) employing the Fourier bootstrap ARDL cointegration method developed by Yilanci et al. (2020) and the Fourier bootstrap Toda–Yamamoto causality method developed by Nazlioglu et al. (2016). In the cointegration approach, an additional F-test provides better insights to define degenerate cases and the bootstrap test performance is powerful than the asymptotic test. In this context, Fourier bootstrap ARDL test results revealed that there is a long-term relationship between ecological footprint and economic growth, energy consumption, and economic globalization in seven countries—namely, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. According to long-run coefficients, in general, economic growth and energy consumption have negative effects on ecological footprint, whereas economic globalization has a positive effect on the ecological footprint for these countries. To evaluate it more specifically, (i) real gross domestic product per capita has positive and statistically significant coefficients on the ecological footprint in China, India, Indonesia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, except for Germany. (ii) Energy consumption per capita also has positive and statistically significant coefficients on the ecological footprint in China, Germany, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, except for Indonesia. (iii) Finally, the economic globalization process has negative and statistically significant coefficients on the ecological footprint in Canada, China, India, and Saudi Arabia, except for Indonesia. On the other hand, Fourier bootstrap Toda–Yamamoto causality test results show a mixed character. Governments should take action to reduce the negative effects of the climate crisis as immediate as possible, which has been widely expressed recently. Among these, increasing the use of renewable energy sources and new carbon-free technologies in the production process appears as important policy tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]