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The relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution continues to attract significant research interest for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers all over the globe. Theoretically, the environmental benefit of economic growth should be greater than its negative externality with higher level of development. However, from the African perspective, countries with higher economic performances often face several environmental challenges, which raises the doubt whether economic growth helps or constrains environmental quality improvement. Under the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, this study re-examined the effect of economic growth on CO2 emissions conditional on the dynamics of urbanization, renewable energy, and good governance across 47 African countries using panel data from 1996 to 2019. We employ panel cointegration tests to establish whether there is a long-run equilibrium relationship among our variables. We also apply pooled mean group ARDL (PMG-ARDL) techniques and the Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test to determine the long- and short-run effects of economic growth, urbanization, renewable energy consumption, and good governance on CO2 emissions. The results from the PMG estimator validate the EKC hypothesis since a 1% surge in GDP per capita increases emissions by 0.61% in the long run, while a 1% increase in its square decreases emissions by 0.03%. In the short-run, economic growth does not exercise any significant effect on emissions. Furthermore, results indicate a significantly negative and positive long-run effect of renewable energy and governance, respectively. Finally, our causality test shows bidirectional relationship between CO2 emissions and all the explanatory variables. Henceforth, we provided policy implications based on the study's results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the asymmetric effects of both aggregate and disaggregate forms of energy consumption along with economic growth on environmental quality for Pakistan covering the period from 1971 to 2014. We have employed unit root test with breaks for stationary checks, BDS test for nonlinearity check and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) approach for assessing the asymmetric co-integrating relationships among the variables by decomposing them into positive and negative shocks. The empirical findings for aggregate consumption reveal that only negative shocks have a significant impact on ecological footprint. Similarly, different sources of energy consumption have diverse asymmetric effects on ecological footprint. The positive (negative) shocks to oil and gas consumption increase (decrease) ecological footprint. Thus, an increase in oil consumption has a deteriorating impact on environmental quality while a decrease in gas consumption has a favorable impact on environmental quality. The asymmetric relationships also hold between coal consumption, electricity consumption, and ecological footprint. The positive shocks to coal and electricity consumption are negatively related with environmental quality while negative shocks are positively related with environmental quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the influence of rapid economic development on pollution at the municipal level in China. It constructs a Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology model (STIRPAT model) and uses comprehensive municipal data on industrial pollution and economic performance. The dataset contains 290 cities from 2003 to 2016 as a sample for the panel data analysis. The study further separates the cities into two groups by their levels of economic development for heterogeneity analysis. It reveals that a low level of economic development would aggravate environmental pollution, and when the economy reaches a high level, this economic development will improve environmental quality. We also find that the relationships between foreign direct investment and industrial dust and sulfur dioxide (SO2) discharge are significant, while the relationship between economic growth and effluent emission is not. The more developed subsample cities present an inverted U-shaped curve between industrial pollutant emission, GDP per capita, and foreign direct investment, while the less developed subsamples show no such relationship. Since the shape of these curves differs among regions, their turning points vary accordingly. Based on this finding, this study suggests that the governments of more developed cities should balance environmental pollution and economic development by enhancing environmental regulations and adjusting industrial structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]