The influence of renewable energy and financial development on testing the environmental Kuznets curve in Lebanon: ARDL approach

This study aims to investigate the relationships between economic development and environmental degradation regarding the emissions of CO₂ and SO₂ in Southeast Asia (SEA). The pooling data consist of 10 countries, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, in the period 2003-2012. Furthermore, income elasticity of CO₂ and SO₂ emissions is computed for each country to observe the sensitivity of environmental degradation through the emissions of CO₂ and SO₂ brought by economic development.
The results indicate that CO₂ displays an inverted U-shape pattern, whereas SO₂ has decreased at an increasing rate since 2003. It is expected that SO₂ will increase as the SEA economies further develop. The turning points for both CO₂ and SO₂, indicate that the current SEA income level has not reached the turning point. The income elasticities show that income elasticities for CO₂ are positive for all 10 countries. Both Singapore and Malaysia are classified as countries with high income. However, Singapore, with 0.64%, has the highest income elasticity, and Malaysia, with 0.15%, has the second lowest. There is no indication that wealthy countries have a significant impact on CO₂ through economic development. Income elasticities for SO₂ of each country are all negative. This suggests that SO₂ is an inferior good. Brunei, with 8.41%, has the most sensitivity toward change in SO₂ emissions, whereas Myanmar, with only 0.58%, is the least sensitive to SO₂ emissions.

This study came to inspect the impact of the development of both financial market and banking system on the economic growth of Jordan based on the annual data covering the period 1993–2017. Through the use of many methodologies: Johansen cointegration test, (VECM), and Granger causality test, where real GDP was used as an indicator of economic growth, the real market value of stocks (Market Capitalization) (LCAP) and Share Turnover (LTURN) are indicators for the financial market, Money supply in the broad concept (LM2), and Local domestic credit (LCR) are indicators for the banking sector.
The results of this study reported that the study variables are stationary, and in the level of order 2, they are integrated, and a long-run relationship between the study variables existed according to the Johansen co-integration test. VECM model result and the target model result confirm a short-run causality running from the all variables toward GDP. Granger causality test underline a single directional causality running from variables of our study to GDP and denote the short-run impact between LCAP, LTURN, LM2, LCR, and LGDP. The analysis of the variance decomposition shows that the development of the banking system affects economic growth almost equally with the impact of the development of the financial market. The results go to the same line of supply-leading hypothesis.

This study aims to observe the long run and short run effects of gross domestic product, foreign direct investment inflows and trade on CO₂ emissions and causality relationships between these factors, using annual data for the period of 1974-2010. The empirical results demonstrate that the inverted U-shaped relationship of environmental Kuznets curve is valid for Turkey. In addition, there are positive long run effects of foreign direct investment and trade openness on CO₂ emissions. The authors also find a bidirectional causality relationship between CO₂ emission and FDI.