Fresh evidence of the impact of economic complexity, health expenditure, natural resources, plastic consumption, and renewable energy in air pollution deaths in the USA? An empirical approach.

Most plastic waste generated from plastic consumption cannot be recycled and is destroyed by burning. As a result of burning plastics, microplastics spread into the atmosphere, increasing air pollution. Respiratory diseases and chronic health problems are caused by air pollution. Approximately 7 million people die each year due to pollution-related ailments. Therefore, it is crucial to provide empirical evidence rather than approximate estimates of the role of plastic consumption in air pollution-related deaths. Also, understanding the causes of air pollution-related deaths and demonstrating the policies' effectiveness will provide valuable insights for policymakers, the international community, and researchers. This study investigates the effects of plastic consumption, health expenditures, natural resources, economic complexity, and renewable energy on air pollution deaths in the USA from 1995 to 2019 using the novel Fourier Augmented ARDL method. The findings show that plastic consumption, health expenditures, natural resources, and economic complexity increase air pollution deaths, while renewable energy decreases it. Such findings imply that plastic consumption is an essential determinant of air pollution-related mortality, that health policy must be reconsidered, that efficient use of resources is important and that sophisticated economic structures do not always produce the desired results. Overall, policymakers should review health policies to reduce deaths from air pollution and take measures to support green growth using renewable energy and economic complexity tools.

The effects of environmental taxes, renewable energy consumption and environmental technology on the ecological footprint: Evidence from advanced panel data analysis.

The world faces various challenges in terms of environmental sustainability. An increasing world population, the rigidity of traditional production and consumption patterns, the complexity of economic activities, globalization, and harmful emissions intensify environmental pressures. In this context, the evaluation of various environmental policy instruments is important to alleviate environmental pressures and, thus, combat climate change. This study aims to investigate the impact of environmental taxes, renewable energy consumption, and environmental technology on the ecological footprint in OECD countries by using data from 1994 to 2018 and modern panel data techniques. The results of the AMG estimator indicate that environmental taxation and renewable energy consumption play a role in reducing the ecological footprint; however, results imply that environmental technology does not have a statistically significant effect on the ecological footprint. In addition, we applied DCCE and CS-ARDL estimators to obtain robustness results and observed that the findings remained valid. Therefore, the results of the study suggest that regulations to increase the effectiveness of environmental taxes, renewable energy consumption, and environmental technology should be promoted to ensure environmental sustainability.

The impacts of the refugee population, renewable energy consumption, carbon emissions, and economic growth on health expenditure in Turkey: new evidence from Fourier-based analyses.

Health expenditures are affected by different macroeconomic variables. This study aims to examine the impact of renewable energy consumption, carbon emissions, the refugee population, and economic growth on Turkey's health expenditures from 1975 to 2019. For this purpose, firstly, the stationarity orders of the variables were examined with the Fourier-based stationarity test. The long-run effects of the variables on health expenditures were also examined using the Fourier-based cointegration test. The results show that there is a long-run relationship between health expenditures and the explanatory variables. In addition, long-run coefficients were calculated, and it was concluded that carbon emissions and the refugee population increased health expenditures while renewable energy consumption decreased. The causality results indicate that there is unidirectional permanent causality from health expenditures to renewable energy consumption and economic growth and bidirectional permanent causality between carbon emissions and health expenditures. Overall, adopting environmentally and renewable energy-friendly policies and controlling the refugee population are essential policy tools in terms of health expenditures.

Do transport taxes reduce air pollution in the top 10 countries with the highest transport tax revenues? A country-specific panel data analysis.

Recently, policymakers have been developing some policies to improve environmental quality. Environmental taxes are the most important of these policies. This study examines the effects of transport taxes, economic growth, and fossil fuel energy consumption on air pollution within the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis framework. The study used data from 1994 to 2019 for the ten countries with the highest transport tax revenues. According to the results, while the EKC hypothesis is valid for Portugal and Switzerland, it is not valid for all other countries. Moreover, fossil fuel energy consumption seems to increase air pollution in all countries except the Netherlands and Switzerland. However, transport taxes increase air pollution in Brazil. Therefore, transport taxes are not effective in reducing air pollution. In this context, it was concluded that the structure of transport taxes should be improved or reformed. In addition, it has been underlined that those national decisions alone will not be sufficient to improve transport taxes or environmental taxes. Therefore, regulations to be made with international coordination will be more successful in combating environmental problems by preventing tax competition and increasing tax harmonization.