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An investigation of the environmental Kuznets relationship in BRICS countries at a sectoral economic level

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Abstract

The nexus between economic growth and environmental conditions in BRICS countries for the period 2005–2018, using a Panel Corrected Standard Errors methodology considering cross-sectional dependence, heterogeneous slope coefficients, and aggregate data on four sectors of the economy: agriculture and forestry, industries (including construction), commercial and public services, and transportation, were studied. The study employs a set of covariates such as per sector electricity, coal, oil consumption, sectoral Gross Value Added, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to account for sectoral income and environmental degradation. This study further contributes to the literature by being one of the pioneering works that examine the environmental Kuznets relationship at the sectoral level in the BRICS countries. It was revealed that sectoral income has a positive and statistically significant effect on CO2 emissions for the industrial sector and a negative and statistically significant effect on CO2 emissions for the commercial and public utilities sectors. It was confirmed for Russia that the relationship between income growth in the transportation sector is a U-shaped Kuznets curve. So as income growth, this will result in further environmental damage. The Russian and South African agriculture and forestry sector and the Chinese commercial and public services sector revealed an inverted U-shaped curve.

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Funding

CeBER R&D unit funded by national funds through FCT–Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., project UIDB/05037/2020; NECE, R&D unit funded by national funds through FCT–Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., project UIDB/04630/2020.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NECE-UBI and Management and Economics Department, University of Beira Interior, Rua Marquês d′Ávila e Bolama, 6201-001, Covilhã, Portugal

    Ernesto Ferreira & Victor Moutinho

  2. CeBER and University of Coimbra, Faculty of Economics, Av. Dias da Silva 165, 3004-512, Coimbra, Portugal

    José Alberto Fuinhas

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  1. Ernesto Ferreira
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  2. José Alberto Fuinhas
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  3. Victor Moutinho
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Contributions

EF: Conceptualization, Writing-Original draft preparation, Supervision, Validation. JAF: Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing-Reviewing and Editing. VM: Data curation, Methodology, Investigation.

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Correspondence to José Alberto Fuinhas.

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Ferreira, E., Fuinhas, J.A. & Moutinho, V. An investigation of the environmental Kuznets relationship in BRICS countries at a sectoral economic level. Energy Syst 13, 1031–1054 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12667-021-00459-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12667-021-00459-3

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