Ilhan Ozturk

Causal relationship between CO 2 emissions, real GDP, energy consumption, financial development, trade openness, and urbanization in Tunisia

The aim of this paper is to examine the causal relationship between CO2 emissions, real GDP, energy consumption, financial development, trade openness, and urbanization in Tunisia over the period of 1971–2012. The long-run relationship is investigated by the auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration and error correction method (ECM). The results of the analysis reveal a positive sign for the coefficient of financial development, suggesting that the financial development in Tunisia has taken place at the expense of environmental pollution. The Tunisian case also shows a positive monotonic relationship between real GDP and CO2 emissions. This means that the results do not support the validity of environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. In addition, the paper explores causal relationship between the variables by using Granger causality models and it concludes that financial development plays a vital role in the Tunisian economy.

The influence of economic growth, urbanization, trade openness, financial development, and renewable energy on pollution in Europe

This study investigates the influence of disaggregated renewable electricity production by source on CO2 emission in 23 selected European countries for the period of 1990–2013. Panel data techniques were used in examining the relationships. The Pedroni cointegration results indicated that CO2 emission, GDP growth, urbanization, financial development, and renewable electricity production by source were cointegrated. Moreover, the fully modified ordinary least-square results revealed that GDP growth, urbanization, and financial development increase CO2 emission in the long run, while trade openness reduces it. Furthermore, renewable electricity generated from combustible renewables and waste, hydroelectricity, and nuclear power have a negative long-run effect on CO2 emission, while renewable electricity generated from solar power and wind power is insignificant. The VECM Granger causality also revealed that GDP growth is the only variable that has causal effects on CO2 emission in all the investigated models, while the rest of the variables have causal effects on CO2 emission in only a few models. A number of policy recommendations were provided for the European countries.

Causality among carbon emissions, energy consumption and growth in India

Abstract This study attempts to investigate the long-run Granger causality relationship between energy consumption, carbon dioxide emission and economic growth in India over the period 1971-2007. The augmented Dickey– Fuller test (ADF), Phillips-Perron test (PP) and KPSS test are used to test for Granger causality in cointegration models which take account of the stochastic properties of the variables. The most important result is that there is feedback causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in India which implies that the level of economic activity and energy consumption mutually influence each other; a high level of economic growth leads to a high level of energy consumption and vice versa. The value of the error correction term confirms the expected convergence process in the long-run for carbon emissions and growth in India which

Investigating the presence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in Kenya: an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach

This study investigates the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in Kenya using the time period of 1980–2012. To achieve the objective of this study, the ARDL approach was utilized. To prevent any estimation errors and unreliability in the model, the Narayan and Narayan (Energy Policy 38:661–666, 2010) approach was used to control the multicollinearity problems in the regression. The outcome of this research revealed that fossil fuel energy consumption, GDP, urbanization, and trade openness increase air pollution mutually in the long run and short run. However, renewable energy consumption mitigates air pollution in the long run and the short run. Moreover, financial development also reduces air pollution, but only in the long run. Based on the results, the EKC hypothesis does exist in Kenya. From the findings of this research, few policy recommendations were provided to help Kenya for reducing its air pollution levels.

Are Fluctuations in Energy Consumption per Capita Transitory? Evidence from Turkey

The aim of this study is to test the unit root null hypothesis for energy consumption variables in Turkey. We consider the integrational properties of energy consumption for seven sectors during 1970–2006 period. When we apply the LM univariate test without break, we find a unit root in energy consumption for industrial, transportation, agriculture, non-energy field, final energy consumption and circuit and energy sectors. Thus, shocks to energy consumption have a permanent effect on these sectors. However, when we apply one break LM unit root test for each sector we find that all disaggregate energy sectors are stationary, which means that shocks to energy consumption have transitory effects. Generally, except for residential energy consumption, we find strong support that shocks to energy consumption have a permanent effect on energy consumption in Turkey. However, by allowing break, the null hypothesis of a unit root is also rejected for other energy consumption cases where shocks are transitory in nature.

The Role of Renewable Energy Consumption and Trade: Environmental Kuznets Curve Analysis for Sub‐Saharan Africa Countries

Based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis, this paper uses panel cointegration techniques to investigate the short and the long-run relationship between CO2 emissions, economic growth, renewable energy consumption and trade openness for a panel of 24 Sub-Saharan Africa countries over the period 1980-2010. The validity of the EKC hypothesis has not been supported for these countries. Short-run Granger causality results reveal that there is a bidirectional causality between emissions and economic growth; bidirectional causality between emissions and real exports; unidirectional causality from real imports to emissions; and unidirectional causality runs from trade (exports or imports) to renewable energy consumption. There is an indirect short-run causality running from emissions to renewable energy and an indirect short-run causality from GDP to renewable energy. In the long-run, the error correction term is statistically significant for emissions, renewable energy consumption and trade openness. The long-run estimates suggest that real GDP per capita and real imports per capita both have a negative and statistically significant impact on per capita CO2 emissions. The impact of the square of real GDP per capita and real exports per capita are both positive and statistically significant on per capita CO2 emissions. For the model with imports, renewable energy consumption per capita has a positive impact on per capita emissions. One policy recommendation is that Sub-Saharan countries should expand their trade exchanges particularly with developed countries and try to maximize their benefit from technology transfer generated by such trade relations as this increases their renewable energy consumption.

The Role of Education in Economic Development: A Theoretical Perspective

Education in every sense is one of the fundamental factors of development. No country can achieve sustainable economic development without substantial investment in human capital. Education enriches people’s understanding of themselves and world. It improves the quality of their lives and leads to broad social benefits to individuals and society. Education raises people’s productivity and creativity and promotes entrepreneurship and technological advances. In addition it plays a very crucial role in securing economic and social progress and improving income distribution.

Does financial development reduce environmental degradation? Evidence from a panel study of 129 countries

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of financial development on CO2 emission in 129 countries classified by the income level. A panel CO2 emission model using urbanisation, GDP growth, trade openness, petroleum consumption and financial development variables that are major determinants of CO2 emission was constructed for the 1980–2011 period. The results revealed that the variables are cointegrated based on the Pedroni cointegration test. The dynamic ordinary least squares (OLS) and the Granger causality test results also show that financial development can improve environmental quality in the short run and long run due to its negative effect on CO2 emission. The rest of the determinants, especially petroleum consumption, are determined to be the major source of environmental damage in most of the income group countries. Based on the results obtained, the investigated countries should provide banking loans to projects and investments that can promote energy savings, energy efficiency and renewable energy to help these countries reduce environmental damage in both the short and long run.

Investigating the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis: the role of tourism and ecological footprint

The main objective of this study is to examine the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis by utilizing the ecological footprint as an environment indicator and GDP from tourism as the economic indicator. To achieve this goal, an environmental degradation model is established during the period of 1988–2008 for 144 countries. The results from the time series generalized method of moments (GMM) and the system panel GMM revealed that the number of countries that have a negative relationship between the ecological footprint and its determinants (GDP growth from tourism, energy consumption, trade openness, and urbanization) is more existent in the upper middle- and high-income countries. Moreover, the EKC hypothesis is more present in the upper middle- and high-income countries than the other income countries. From the outcome of this research, a number of policy recommendations were provided for the investigated countries.

Finance - Growth Nexus: Evidence from Turkey

This paper examines the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth in Turkey for the period 1986:1-2006:4 using dynamic time series models. The results of the cointegration analysis provide evidence of no long-run relationship between financial development and economic growth. Therefore, the empirical investigation is carried out in a vector autoregression (VAR) framework to analyze the short run effect of the financial intermediary development on economic growth. The results show a one-way causal relationship running from the financial development to the economic growth in Turkey.