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Freight transport and energy consumption: What impact on carbon dioxide emissions and environmental quality in MENA countries?

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Abstract

This article aims to study the impact of fossil energy demand and freight transportation on carbon emissions for Middle Eastern and North African countries over 2000–2018. To estimate the possible relationships, we used the GMM estimators. Furthermore, the Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel causality test was applied to analyze the causality between the variables. The results prove that the effects of freight transport and energy consumption on CO2 emissions, then on environmental degradation, are positive and significant for both global and sub-panels. Also, we found that the carbon emissions are driven by growth, urbanization, trade openness and financial development. These findings justify the rapid emergence of new concepts such as sustainable development, sustainable transport and energy efficiency considered as helpful policies to effectively resist the serious environmental degradation.

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Notes

  1. See the website: http://germanwatch.org/en/9472.

  2. The International Energy Agency: http://www.iea.org.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Editor-in-Chief of the journal and the two anonymous reviewers for their highly constructive comments and suggestions in preparing this final version of the manuscript. Any remaining errors are our own.

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Table 6 Descriptive statistics
Table 7 Correlation matrix

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Saidi, S. Freight transport and energy consumption: What impact on carbon dioxide emissions and environmental quality in MENA countries?. Econ Change Restruct 54, 1119–1145 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10644-020-09296-3

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