Estimating environmental efficiency of the selected Asian countries: does convergence exist?

Environmental degradation has attained much attention from researchers and policymakers at national and global levels. The ever-increasing energy use in production methods is considered one of the fundamental reasons for environmental degradation. The concept of environmental efficiency in the wake of sustainable growth evolved in the last three decades. The present study has been designed to estimate environmental efficiency using the Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index (MLI) using annual data from 43 Asian countries from 1990 to 2019. The MLI is an established econometric approach to estimate cases where input variables are used to get output variables in desirable and undesirable forms. Labor, capital, and energy consumption are input variables, while carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (undesirable variable) and gross domestic product (undesirable variable) are taken as output variables. The results suggested that, on average, environmental efficiency has decreased by 0.3% over the period in selected Asian countries. Cambodia, Turkey, and Nepal have the highest total factor productivity (TFP) output growth rate on average among 43 Asian countries. These countries are excellent examples of sustainable development that balances environmental protection and efficiency. On the other hand, Kuwait, Mongolia, and Yemen showed the least TFP growth. The study also employed unconditional and convergence tests where the countries' conditional convergence is based on foreign direct investment, population density, inflation, industrialization, and globalization. Some policy implications for Asian countries are also discussed at the end of the study.

Effect of environmental taxes on environmental innovation and carbon intensity in China: an empirical investigation.

Environmental taxes are deemed to be an important carbon mitigating factor and also encourage the producers to adopt environmentally friendly technologies. Therefore, the main objective of the analysis is to evaluate the environmental taxes on environmental innovations and carbon intensity in China. The novel quantile autoregressive distributed lag (QARDL) is applied to investigate the model empirically. From the results, we confer that the short and long run estimated coefficients of environmental taxes are positive and significant at most quantiles in the environmental innovation model, implying that the higher the rate of environmental taxes, the higher the rate of environment-related innovations. However, the estimates of environmental taxes are significant and negative in both short and long run at more than half quantiles in the carbon emissions model, suggesting the positive role of environmental taxes in reducing carbon emissions. In general, our findings imply that an increase in environment-related taxes helps reduce carbon intensity and promote environmental innovation in China. The study suggests that policymakers in China should promote environmental innovation and expand the environmental tax base to achieve the objective of carbon neutrality.

A novel lens of stock market capitalization and environmental degradation.

This research article examines the impact of stock market capitalization on carbon emissions using forty high carbon-emitting countries from 1996 to 2018. This study adopts the Driscoll-Kraay method that simultaneously tackles heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation, and contemporaneous correlation issues. We find an inverted U relationship between stock market capitalization (SMC) and environmental degradation. We propose an extended environmental Kuznets curve based on SMC while energy intensity, industrialization, and urbanization increase emissions in sample countries. The quadratic method, SLM test, and derivative graphing detect the consensus of the inverted U relationship. The weak-negative SMC2 coefficient reveals that the dangerous impact of capitalization declines gradually and finally curbs the environmental degradation challenges. The relationship is strong in highly polluted countries with overvalued stock markets. The study catches no policy synergies between the growing stock market and increased carbon emissions. Stock market capitalization should be integrated into climate change adaptation strategies at national and regional levels, primarily to address the dark effect of environmental degradation.

Exploring the asymmetric determinants of consumption and production-based CO2 emissions in China.

Environmental pollution has intensified significantly in the last few decades. Policymakers have considered this issue due to its direct influence on human lives throughout the globe. This study explores the asymmetric determinants of consumption-based and production-based CO2 emissions for China, for time horizon 1990-2019. ARDL and NARDL regression approaches have been adopted for empirical investigation. The ARDL regression method reveals that GDP does not produce any impact on production-based and consumption-based CO2 emissions, while energy use contributes as an increasing determinant of consumption-based and production-based CO2 emissions in the long-run. The NARDL regression method reveals that a positive shock in GDP is beneficial for a decline of consumption-based CO2 emissions, while it does not reduce production-based CO2 emissions in the long-run. However, negative shock in GDP contributes as an increasing determinant of consumption-based CO2 emissions. Results also report that positive shock in energy use behaves as an increasing agent of consumption-based and production-based CO2 emissions in the long-run, while negative shock in energy use produces a decline in production-based CO2 emissions in the long-run. Thus, policymakers should adopt such demand and supply sides' management policies that contribute to controlling CO2 emissions.