The heterogeneous effects of urbanisation and institutional quality on greenhouse gas emissions in Belt and Road Initiative countries

The impact of urbanisation on green total factor productivity: Exploring threshold and mediating effects of human capital

Green development is main direction of high-quality economic development in China. Urbanisation and human capital (HC) are important factors affecting green development. This study examines effects of urbanisation and HC on green total factor productivity (GTFP) using least squares dummy variable model, based on provincial data in China from 2001 to 2019. This study then explored impact of urbanisation on GTFP through HC (educated HC, healthy HC, and HC structure), adopting mediating effect and threshold effect model. The results showed that urbanisation and three types of HC promote GTFP in China and coastal region. In inland region, urbanisation has insignificant impact on GTFP, while educated HC and HC structure improve it. The mediating analysis revealed that educated and healthy HC in China and coastal region enhance promotion effect of urbanisation on GTFP, whereas HC structure hinders it. In inland region, only healthy HC stimulates promotion effect of urbanisation on GTFP. Considering threshold effect of educated and healthy HC, promotion effect of urbanisation on GTFP is weaker than threshold value; but effect is stronger above threshold value. The promotion effect of urbanisation on GTFP is stronger when value of HC structure is below the threshold, while effect is weakened as value exceeds threshold value. Policy implications are documented to promote urbanisation in a differentiated manner, increase investment in HC, and strengthen coordination between urbanisation and HC.

The role of economic production, energy consumption, and trade openness in urbanization-environment nexus: a heterogeneous analysis on developing economies along the Belt and Road route

In today's world, where urbanization is at its pinnacle, has created a significant economic gap between rural and urban populations in developing economies and substantially influenced environmental degradation. This study investigates the relationship between urbanization and environmental degradation via carbon emissions among developing countries along the Belt and Road route from 1990 to 2019 while using economic production, energy consumption, and trade openness as control variables. The study engages current econometric methodologies to uncover accurate and reliable findings, and the outcomes reveal that the panel under investigation is cross-sectionally dependent and heterogeneous. Therefore, the AMG, CCEMG, and DCCEMG estimators are employed to examine the effect connection between the variables. The outcomes unveil that urbanization, economic production, and energy consumption escalate environmental degradation, but trade openness is confirmed as a trivial determinant of environmental degradation. Furthermore, the causal connections between the variables disclose bi-directional causalities between urbanization and environmental degradation and between energy consumption and environmental degradation. Nevertheless, uni-directional causalities are affirmed, spanning from economic production to environmental degradation and from trade openness to environmental degradation. Finally, policy implications are discussed.

Impact of energy efficiency, technology innovation, institutional quality, and trade openness on greenhouse gas emissions in ten Asian economies

Despite the fact that Asian economies have experienced robust economic growth in recent decades, rising pollution emissions have raised worries among policymakers about the long-term stability of this output growth. Knowing this fact, the present study attempts to empirically analyze the impact of some important factors, e.g., energy efficiency, technology innovations, trade openness, and institutional quality, on environment in 10 Asian economies over the period 1995-2018. Taking into account the slope heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence present in the data, Westerlund and Edgerton (2008) and Banerjee and Carrion-i-Silvestre (2017) cointegration techniques and cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag model (CS-ARDL) estimation are applied. For robust analysis, augmented mean group (AMG) and common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG) are also employed in the study. The empirical findings provided by selected variables reveal that both trade openness and institutional quality have detrimental impact, whereas energy efficiency and technology innovations have favorable impact on environmental quality in the selected economies. Empirical findings are robust to various policy recommendations. To create a sustainable future environment, Asian economies should focus on the improvement of their institutions quality and increase investments in technology innovations. The Asian countries must encourage trade-related environmental regulations and energy efficiency policies for better and sustainable environmental quality.

Decarbonization: examining the role of environmental innovation versus renewable energy use

Climate change resulting from a rapid increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is adversely affecting humanity. If the GHG emission continues to rise at the current pace, humanity will face severe consequences and reverse all the progress made. This paper, therefore, uses relevant data from 14 developing countries in Asia from 1990 to 2018 to examine the potential impact of environmental innovation on CO2 emissions by controlling globalization, urbanization, and economic growth. The number of environmental-related technology patents is used as a measure of environmental innovation. We employed a panel long-run regression model - FMOLS, PCSE, and FGLS to estimate the elasticity of CO2 emissions. For causal association among variables, we used Dumitrescu-Hurlin Granger causality tests. Our results show that renewable energy consumption and globalization have a significant impact in reducing CO2 emissions, while environmental technology innovations play a meager role in reducing emissions and only when economic growth support those type of investment. Furthermore, we found urbanization, oil consumption, and economic growth is detrimental to the environment, which is also evident in past studies. Therefore, countries should invest in renewable energy and environmental innovation aligned with the growth to reduce GHG emissions.