The impacts of globalization, financial development, government expenditures, and institutional quality on CO2 emissions in the presence of environmental Kuznets curve

The main objective of this study is to examine the impacts of globalization, financial development, government expenditures, and institutional quality on CO₂ emissions, incorporating energy consumption, and GDP per capita in the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) model for 47 Emerging Market and Developing Economies (EMDEs) between 1990 and 2014. Owing to the presence of cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity in the panel data, CADF and CIPS unit root tests are employed to validate the stationarity of the variables. Westerlund (Oxf Bull Econ Stat 69:709–748, 2007) and Banerjee and Carrion-i-Silvestre (J Time Ser Anal 38:610–636, 2017) cointegration tests denote the occurrence of cointegration among the variables. We employed CCEMG, AMG, and DCCE estimators to estimate heterogeneous parameters. The findings demonstrate that globalization, financial development, and energy consumption increase CO₂ emissions. Besides, the EKC hypothesis is affirmed in EMDEs. The accrual of governments’ financial and governance activities also boosts carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, the analysis of Dumitrescu and Hurlin causality provides evidences for the feedbacks among the variables and CO₂ emissions. From the aforementioned results, there exists the trade-off effect between economic growth and environmental quality in EMDE countries. Finally, the empirical findings of this study indicate profound implications for policy makers, which recommend governments to consider the role of finance and governance in order to ensure that energy consumption, financial development, and sustainable economic growth are in harmony with the environment in the globalization era.