Exploring the nature of EKC hypothesis in Asia's top emitters: role of human capital, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption.

The present study uses both carbon dioxide emission and ecological footprints as proxies for environmental degradation to examine the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for the top three emitters from Asia, i.e., China, India, and Japan. To this end, the autoregressive distributed lag model for time series and panel estimation is used for a period spanning over 1980-2016. For carbon dioxide emission, China presents an inverted-U shape of the environmental Kuznets curve, while a U-shape relationship is found for India and Japan. Similarly, when the hypothesis is tested with the ecological footprint, Japan offers an inverted U-shape and U-shaped association is detected for China and India. The panel analysis indicates the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve with both proxies of environmental degradation. Besides, human capital and renewable energy promote environmental sustainability, while non-renewable energy use hinders environmental quality. The findings of this study suggest that in order to meet the combined goals of economic growth and environmental protection, the three economies, i.e., China, India, and Japan, should employ renewable energy-enabled technology.

Growth and determinants of CO2 emissions: evidence from selected Asian emerging economies.

The study analyzes the impact of economic growth, energy consumption, foreign direct investment inflows, population, population density, labor force, and trade openness on carbon dioxide emissions in seven emerging Asian economies over the period 1991-2017. To this end, it uses cross-section dependence test, second-generation unit root test, panel cointegration, and the bound test for cointegration and the autoregressive distributed lag estimations. The findings of the study are as follows: first, the kinked exponential growth is estimated for all the variables on the individual data set of seven countries. Second, the study finds a positive association of economic growth, energy consumption, population, and population density on carbon dioxide emissions. Third, it finds that the foreign direct investment inflows are negatively associated with carbon dioxide emissions. The paper also suggests potential implications and some future research avenues.