Analysis of income inequality and environmental pollution in BRICS using fresh asymmetric approach.

With rapid economic growth, BRICS is facing enormous burdens of carbon emission and severe issues of income inequality. However, behind this economic success, the BRICS economies also face few thoughtful challenges to improve environmental quality by catching up the sustainable development goals. Consequently, the existing empirical research is concerned with the dynamic links between income inequality and CO2 emissions by using the novel nonlinear ARDL approach, but small attention has been paid to the BRICS in literature. Therefore, we observed that a negative and positive change in income inequality has positive effect on CO2 emissions in Russia and South Africa in the long run, although a positive change in income inequality has positive effects on CO2 emissions in Brazil, Russia, and China, while a negative change in income inequality has negative effect on CO2 emissions in India, Brazil, and Russia in the short run. Hence, the findings value specific attention from policymakers in BRICS economies.

Geopolitical risks, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions in BRICS: an asymmetric analysis.

Environmental pollution is a geopolitical problem, and researchers have not considered it seriously yet. This study examines the asymmetric influence of geopolitical risk on energy consumption and CO2 emissions in BRICS economies using the non-linear autoregressive distributed lag model (NARDL) testing method over the period of 1985-2019. Therefore, we observed that in the long run, a positive and negative change in geopolitical risk has negative effect on energy consumption in India, Brazil, and China. The outcomes confirmed that an increase in geopolitical risk has negative effect on CO2 emissions in Russia and South Africa. Although a decrease in geopolitical risk has negative effects on CO2 emissions in India, China, South Africa, it has positive coefficient in Russia in the long run. Based on empirical findings, we also revealed that asymmetries mostly exist in terms of magnitude rather than direction. Our empirical results are country and group specific. The findings call for important changes in energy and environment policies to accommodate geopolitical risks.