Impact of technology and economic complexity on environmental pollution and economic growth in developing and developed countries: using IPAT and STIRPAT models

Does economic complexity help in achieving environmental sustainability? New empirical evidence from N-11 countries

In view of the SDGs argued by UNO, it is vital to address the pressing issues regarding sustainable development. The aim of current study is to investigate the impact of economic complexity (ECC) on environmental sustainability. To achieve this aim, we sampled the 25 years of data of Next-11 countries over the period 1995 to 2019. The economic complexity was measured by the economic complexity index (ECI) while environmental sustainability was measured by two proxy variables including CO2 and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The empirical analysis was established by utilizing the unit root test, cointegration test, FMOLS (fully modified OLS) and DOLS (dynamic OLS) models. The estimated coefficient values disclosed that ECC has a negative and statistically significant relationship with both CO2 and GHG emissions in the long run, implying that ECC ensured environmental sustainability. In addition, the analysis reveals that financial development has a negative while economic growth and energy imports have a positive and statistically significant association with both CO2 and GHG emissions. The findings of the current study suggested an important policy regarding the focus on ECC for achieving environmental sustainability in underlying economies. This study provides robustness to the existing literature in alternative data settings (N-11 countries) and by the unique objective of focusing on environmental sustainability.

Will economic development come at the cost of environmental pollution under fiscal pressure? evidence from resource-based cities in China

The traditional view is that local governments are inclined to ease environmental regulations in response to fiscal pressure (FP) and alleviate FP by sacrificing the environment for economic development (ED). This paper takes Chinese Mainland resource-based cities (RBC) as the research sample but draws different conclusions. The research results are as follows: firstly, for RBC, although FP reduces environmental pollution (EP), it is not conducive to ED. Compared with non-resource-based cities (NRBC), the economic negative effect of FP in RBC is more obvious. Secondly, FP is detrimental to ED by reducing EP, and RBC have not sacrificed the environment to promote ED in the context of FP. This paper summarizes that the development path of RBC should be "optimizing government behavior → increasing FP → improving environmental quality → reducing ED level." Thirdly, the impact of FP on cities with slower economic growth and smaller economic gap is greater, and the impact of FP on cities with better environment is more obvious. This paper argues that facing FP, RBC in China will not trade EP for ED; at the same time, we suggest RBC in other countries in the face of the FP, not only thinking of promoting ED at the expense of the EP and ease the FP, but also the development of green ecological requirement, overall consideration of the relationship between EP and ED, and then achieve green and sustainable ED without degrading the environment as far as possible.

Sectoral foreign direct investment and environmental degradation: new insights from diversification of energy mix containing fossil fuels and renewable energy

The objective of the study is to extend the existing literature by investigating the effects of foreign direct investment, gross domestic products and per capita and energy diversification on the nitrogen oxide emissions in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) by using annual data during the period 1992-2019. As per our knowledge, the present study is a first of its kind to examine the impact of a new energy diversification index, based on Herfindahl-Hirschman framework on pollution. This study has adopted a new quantile regression augmented method of moments, which is capable of producing the total impacts of the independent variables across the entire distribution of nitrogen oxides emissions. The findings suggest that an increase in foreign direct investment leads to a decrease in nitrogen oxides emissions at the aggregate level and in both manufacturing and service sectors. We observe that foreign direct investment leads to an increase in nitrogen oxides emissions in the agricultural sector in most of the quantiles. Diversification towards renewable energy causes a decrease in nitrogen oxides emissions in most quantiles at aggregate level, agricultural and manufacturing sectors, whilst diversification leads to an increase in nitrogen oxides emissions in the service sector. The findings also suggest that GDP per capita leads to an increase in NOx emissions in all the quantiles. The study suggests the policy to use and attract more clean energy through foreign direct investment for towards the achievement of sustainable development.