Affiliations 

  • 1 Institute of Climate Change, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 2 Department of Economics and Finance, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, 3086, Australia
  • 3 Department of Management and Engineering, Linköping University, 581 83, Linköping, Sweden
  • 4 Department of Management and Engineering, Linköping University, 581 83, Linköping, Sweden. ali.ahmed@liu.se
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int, 2017 Apr;24(10):9754-9764.
PMID: 28251538 DOI: 10.1007/s11356-017-8599-z

Abstract

Middle-income countries are currently undergoing massive structural changes towards more industrialized economies. In this paper, we carefully examine the impact of these transformations on the environmental quality of middle-income countries. Specifically, we examine the role of sector value addition to GDP on CO2 emission nexus for middle-income economies controlling for the effects of population growth, energy use, and trade openness. Using recently developed panel methods that consider cross-sectional dependence and allow for heterogeneous slope coefficients, we show that energy use and growth of industrial and service sectors positively explain CO2 emissions in middle-income economies. We also find that population growth is insignificantly associated with CO2 emission. Hence, our paper provides a solid ground for developing a sustainable and pro-growth policy for middle-income countries.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.