Abstract
This study explores the symmetric and asymmetric effects of physical infrastructure on energy consumption, economic growth, and air pollution of Pakistan over the period 1990–2019. The ARDL results for the energy consumption model suggest that aircraft carriers (ACC) and road infrastructure foster energy consumption in the short term. For the growth model, the impact of trade is negative and significant in both short run and long run. The results for environmental pollution model suggest that information communication technology (ICT) is positively associated with CO2 emissions, whereas trade is negatively associated with emissions in the short and long run. The road has a positive impact on CO2 emissions while ACC has a negative impact in the long run. The nonlinear ARDL results reveal that negative component of ICT negatively influences energy consumption, while positive component has insignificant impact. Similarly, ACC, road, and trade also exhibit asymmetric effects. ICT has a significantly negative impact on economic growth. Finally, the positive shock to road has a significantly positive impact on pollution but the negative shock has no impact. Additionally, the coefficient of ACC and trade also infer asymmetries in pollution model. The results offer important policy implications for achieving high growth and better environmental quality in Pakistan.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
References
Alshehry AS, Belloumi M (2017) Study of the environmental Kuznets curve for transport carbon dioxide emissions in Saudi Arabia. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev 75:1339–1347
Andrés L, Padilla E (2018) Driving factors of GHG emissions in the EU transport activity. Transp Policy 61:60–74
Baltagi BH, Pinnoi N (1995) Public capital stock and state productivity growth: further evidence from an error components model. Empir Econ 20(2):351–359
Berndt, E. R., Morrison, C. J., & Rosenblum, L. S (1992) High-tech capital formation and labor composition in US manufacturing industries
Bougheas, S., Demetriades, P. O., & Mamuneas, T. P (2000) Infrastructure, specialization, and economic growth. Can J Econ 33(2): 506–522
Brynjolfsson E, Hitt L (1996) Paradox lost? Firm-level evidence on the returns to information systems spending. Manag Sci 42(4):541–558
Caillol S (2011) Fighting global warming: the potential of photocatalysis against CO2, CH4, N2O, CFCs, tropospheric O3. BC and other major contributors to climate change J Photochem Photobiol C: Photochemistry Reviews 12(1):1–19
Canning D, Pedroni P (2004) The effect of infrastructure on long run economic growth. Harvard University 99(9):1–30
Coşar AK, Demir B (2016) Domestic road infrastructure and international trade: evidence from Turkey. J Dev Econ 118:232–244
Danish ZB, Wang Z, Bo W (2018) Energy production, economic growth and CO2 emission: evidence from Pakistan. Nat Hazards 90:27–50
Datta A, Agarwal S (2004) Telecommunications and economic growth: a panel data approach. Appl Econ 36(15):1649–1654
Du H, Chen Z, Peng B, Southworth F, Ma S, Wang Y (2019) What drives CO2 emissions from the transport sector? A linkage analysis. Energy 175:195–204
Fedderke JW, Bogetic Z (2009) Infrastructure and growth in South Africa: direct and indirect productivity impacts of nineteen infrastructure measure. In Manuscript, DPRU Conference
Ghosh, B., & De, P (2004) How do different categories of infrastructure affect development? Evidence from Indian states. Econ. Political Wkly.s 4645–4657
Guo J, Zhang YJ, Zhang KB (2018) The key sectors for energy conservation and carbon emissions reduction in China: evidence from the input-output method. J Clean Prod 179:180–190
Hafeez M, Yuan C, Khelfaoui I, Sultan Musaad OA, Waqas Akbar M, Jie L (2019) Evaluating the energy consumption inequalities in the one belt and one road region: implications for the environment. Energies 12(7):1358
Hafeez M, Yuan C, Shah WUH, Mahmood MT, Li X, Iqbal K (2020) Evaluating the relationship among agriculture, energy demand, finance and environmental degradation in one belt and one road economies. Carbon Manag 11(2):139–154
Herranz-Loncán A (2007) Infrastructure investment and Spanish economic growth, 1850–1935. J Econ Hist 44(3):452–468
Khan S, Majeed MT (2019) Decomposition and decoupling analysis of carbon emissions from economic growth: a case study of Pakistan Pak. J Commer Soc Sci 13(4):868–891
Kharbach M, Chfadi T (2017) CO2 emissions in Moroccan road transport sector: Divisia, Cointegration, and EKC analyses. Sustain Cities Soc 35:396–401
Kuştepeli Y, Gülcan Y, Akgüngör S (2012) Transportation infrastructure investment, growth and international trade in Turkey. Appl Econ 44(20):2619–2629
Lau LJ, Tokutsu I (1992) The impact of computer technology on the aggregate productivity of the United States: an indirect approach, working paper. Stanford University, Stanford, Department of Economics
Lehr B, Lichtenberg F (1999) Information technology and its impact on productivity: firm-level evidence from government and private data sources, 1977-1993. The Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'Economique 32(2):335–362
Lichtenberg FR (1995) The output contributions of computer equipment and personnel: a firm-level analysis. Econ Innov New Technol 3(3–4):201–218
Liddle B (2013) Population, affluence, and environmental impact across development: evidence from panel cointegration modeling. Environ Model Softw 40:255–266
Liddle B (2015) Urban transport pollution: revisiting the environmental Kuznets curve. Int J Sustain Transp 9(7):502–508
Loveman, G. W (1994) An assessment of the productivity impact of information technologies. Information technology and the corporation of the 1990s: Research studies: 84–110
Majeed MT (2018) Information and communication technology (ICT) and environmental sustainability in developed and developing countries. Pak J Commer Soc Sci 12(3):758–783
Majeed MT, Ayub T (2018) Information and communication technology (ICT) and economic growth nexus: a comparative global analysis. Pak J Commer Soc Sci 12(2):443–476
Maparu TS, Mazumder TN (2017) Transport infrastructure, economic development and urbanization in India (1990–2011): is there any causal relationship? Transp Res A Policy Pract 100:319–336
Meo MS, Hafeez M, Shaikh GM, Shahid M (2018) Asymmetric effect of gold and oil prices on stock market performance in Pakistan: new evidence from asymmetric ARDL cointegration. J Bus Strateg 12(2):43–64
Munnell AH (1990) Why has productivity growth declined? Productivity and public investment Rev Econ Des:3–22
Niininen, P (1998) Computers and economic growth in Finland
Pereira AM, Andraz JM (2005) Public investment in transportation infrastructure and economic performance in Portugal. Rev Dev Econ 9(2):177–196
Pesaran MH, Shin Y, Smith RJ (2001) Bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships. J Appl Econ 16(3):289–326
Pilat, D., & Lee, F (2001) Productivity Growth in ICT-producing and ICT-using Industries: a Source of Growth Differentials in the OECD?
Poh, K. W (2001) Globalization and e-commerce: growth and impacts in Singapore. CRITO Working Paper
Pradhan RP, Bagchi TP (2013) Effect of transportation infrastructure on economic growth in India: the VECM approach. Res Transp Econ 38(1):139–148
Roller LH, Waverman L (2001) Telecommunications infrastructure and economic development: a simultaneous approach. Am Econ Rev 91(4):909–923
Saboori B, Sapri M, Bin Baba M (2014) Economic growth, energy consumption and CO2 emissions in OECD (Organization for Economic CO-operation and Development)'s transport sector: a fully modified bi-directional relationship approach. Energy 66:150–161
Salam, S., Hafeez, M., Mahmood, M. T., & Akbar, K. (2019). The dynamic relation between technology adoption, technology innovation, human capital and economy: comparison of lower-middle-income countries. Interdisciplinary description of complex systems: INDECS 17(1-B): 146-161
Sun G, Yuan C, Hafeez M, Raza S, Jie L, Liu X (2020) Does regional energy consumption disparities assist to control environmental degradation in OBOR: an entropy approach. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27(7):7105–7119
Saidi S, Hammami S (2017) Modeling the causal linkages between transport, economic growth and environmental degradation for 75 countries. Transp Res Part D: Transp Environ 53:415–427
Santos G (2017) Road transport and CO2 emissions: what are the challenges? Transp Policy 59:71–74
Shahbaz M, Khraief N, Jemaa MMB (2015) On the causal nexus of road transport CO2 emissions and macroeconomic variables in Tunisia: evidence from combined cointegration tests. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev 51:89–100
Shin Y, Yu B, Greenwood-Nimmo M (2014) Modelling asymmetric cointegration and dynamic multipliers in a nonlinear ARDL framework. In: Festschrift in honor of Peter Schmidt. Springer, New York, pp 281–314
Timilsina GR, Shrestha A (2009) Transport sector CO2 emissions growth in Asia: underlying factors and policy options. Energy Policy 37(11):4523–4539
Xinmin W, Hui P, Hafeez M, Aziz B, Akbar MW, Mirza MA (2020) The nexus of environmental degradation and technology innovation and adoption: an experience from dragon. Air Qual Atmos Health 13(9):1119–1126
Yang, L., Hui, P., Yasmeen, R., Ullah, S., & Hafeez, M (2020) Energy consumption and financial development indicators nexuses in Asian economies: a dynamic seemingly unrelated regression approach. Environ Sci Pollut Res: 1–12
Warner, M. A. M (2014) public investment as an engine of growth (no. 14-148). International Monetary Fund
Zhang C, Nian J (2013) Panel estimation for transport sector CO2 emissions and its affecting factors: a regional analysis in China. Energy Policy 63:918–926
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
This idea was given by Muhammad Afaq Haider Jafri. Muhammad Afaq Haider Jafri, Huizheng Liu, Muhammad Tariq Majeed, and Sana Ullah analyzed the data and wrote the complete paper, while Waheed Ahmad and Rui Xue read and approved the final version.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethical approval
Not applicable.
Consent to participate
I am free to contact any of the people involved in the research to seek further clarification and information.
Consent to publish
Not applicable.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Responsible editor: Nicholas Apergis
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jafri, M.A.H., Liu, H., Majeed, M.T. et al. Physical infrastructure, energy consumption, economic growth, and environmental pollution in Pakistan: an asymmetry analysis. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 16129–16139 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11787-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11787-9