Environmental consequences of population, affluence and technological progress for European countries: A Malthusian view.

This paper examines the short-run and long-run effects of economic, sociological and energy factors on environmental degradation in 28 European countries. In so doing, we employ Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) and Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS) approaches on data from 1990 to 2014 in a STIRPAT (Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology) framework. Key empirical results indicate that these factors may contribute to environmental improvement in the short run; however, there are adverse implications in the long-run. Specifically, economic factors including economic growth, trade openness and foreign direct investment cause environmental degradation in the under-analysis economies. The sociological factors as measured by the population growth and the level of urbanization also show a negative impact on the environmental degradation in the short-run but in the long run, both population size and urbanization increase environmental degradation. These findings are in line with the concerns raised by Thomas Robert Malthus in his Essay on the Principle of Population. With regards to the energy factors, it indicates that the renewable energies help the European environment by reducing the level of carbon dioxide emissions whereas the higher energy intensity is an ecological threat. Our results remain robust in the EKC framework.

Role of financial development, economic growth & foreign direct investment in driving climate change: A case of emerging ASEAN.

In the context of remarkable economic growth and financial development in the emerging economies of East Asia, this paper attempts to shed light on the ecological consequences (CO2 emission) of economic growth, foreign direct investment and financial development in the selected ASEAN-5 economies. Drawing on the data from 1982 to 2014, we employed a set of quantitative techniques for panel data analysis which entailed Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) and Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS) approaches. Our findings indicate that financial and economic development, as well as FDI, have a statistically significant long-run co-integrating relationship with environmental degradation (CO2 emissions) in the under analysis economies. It showed that in ASEAN-5 countries, economic growth, financial development and FDI leads to an increase in environmental degradation. The quadratic term for economic growth showed a negative impact on environmental degradation i.e. Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Our key findings manifest and emphasise the importance of appropriate policies for more inclusive economic and financial development and sustainable foreign direct investment which does not impede on the environment.