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Effects of export concentration on CO2 emissions in developed countries: an empirical analysis

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Abstract

This paper provides the evidence on the short- and the long-run effects of the export product concentration on the level of CO2 emissions in 19 developed (high-income) economies, spanning the period 1962–2010. To this end, the paper makes use of the nonlinear panel unit root and cointegration tests with multiple endogenous structural breaks. It also considers the mean group estimations, the autoregressive distributed lag model, and the panel quantile regression estimations. The findings illustrate that the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis is valid in the panel dataset of 19 developed economies. In addition, it documents that a higher level of the product concentration of exports leads to lower CO2 emissions. The results from the panel quantile regressions also indicate that the effect of the export product concentration upon the per capita CO2 emissions is relatively high at the higher quantiles.

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Notes

  1. Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom (UK), the United States (U.S.), and Uruguay.

  2. See Papageorgiou and Spatafora (2012) for the technical details and the calculation methodology of the Theil index.

  3. Note that data on both variables are also expressed in per capita terms, by dividing the relevant variables with population; these data were also obtained from the WDI.

  4. They are the Mean Group (MG) estimator (Pesaran and Smith 1995), The CD test of Pesaran (2004) indicated the existence of “cross-sectional dependence” in the residuals of mean group methodologies (the MG, the GM-FMOLS, and the GM-DOLS), which questions the assumption of cross-section independence.

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Acknowledgements

The authors express their deepest gratitude to a Referee of this journal for her/his comments and suggestions that enhanced the merit of this work. Special thanks also go to the Editor who gave us the insightful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Piraeus, Piraeus, Greece

    Nicholas Apergis

  2. Hakkari University, Hakkari, Turkey

    Muhlis Can

  3. Istanbul Medeniyet University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Giray Gozgor

  4. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK

    Chi Keung Marco Lau

Authors
  1. Nicholas Apergis
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  2. Muhlis Can
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  3. Giray Gozgor
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  4. Chi Keung Marco Lau
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicholas Apergis.

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Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues

Appendix

Appendix

Table 7 Descriptive statistics and the description of the variables in the panel data of 19 Countries: 1962–2010
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Apergis, N., Can, M., Gozgor, G. et al. Effects of export concentration on CO2 emissions in developed countries: an empirical analysis. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 14106–14116 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-1634-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-1634-x

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