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The direct and indirect effects of democracy on carbon dioxide emissions in BRICS countries: evidence from panel quantile regression

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Abstract

This paper illustrates the direct and indirect effects of democracy on CO2 emissions in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) from 1992 to 2018. In view of the distribution heterogeneity of CO2 emissions, the panel quantile regression model is especially used to explore the nexus among different variables. Furthermore, in order to predict the trends of CO2 emissions in different countries, we also estimate the kernel density function of CO2 emissions in the BRICS countries by the quantile-fitted values. The results indicate that the direct impact of democracy on carbon dioxide emissions is significantly negative and great at high-emission countries. Although the indirect effect of democracy is positive in China and negative in Brazil and South Africa, the total effect of democracy on CO2 emissions remains negative in all BRICS countries. The estimation of kernel density function shows that the distribution of CO2 emissions in each country is gradually concentrated. Moreover, there is an environmental Kuznets curve depicting the linkage of urbanization and carbon dioxide emissions in Brazil and South Africa. These findings further highlight that the impact of democracy on high-emission and low-emission countries should be taken into account in policymaking to achieve sustainable developments.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the associate editor, Professor Eyup Dogan, and the anonymous referees for their constructive comments and suggestions, which are helpful to improve the quality of this paper greatly. Of course, any remaining errors are our own.

Funding

This work is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (CN) (2019JJ40038).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Finance and Statistics, Hunan University, Changsha, China

    Yinghua Ren, Lisi Liu & Rui Tang

  2. College of Business Administration, Hunan University, Changsha, China

    Huiming Zhu

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  1. Yinghua Ren
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  2. Lisi Liu
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Correspondence to Huiming Zhu.

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Responsible editor: Eyup Dogan

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Highlights

• The direct and indirect effects of democracy on CO2 emissions show heterogeneity on different quantiles.

• The negative effect of democracy on CO2 emissions is great in the high-emission countries.

• Distributions of CO2 emissions in BRICS are becoming more and more concentrated over time.

• There is an environmental Kuznets curve describing urbanization and CO2 emissions in the low-emission countries.

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Ren, Y., Liu, L., Zhu, H. et al. The direct and indirect effects of democracy on carbon dioxide emissions in BRICS countries: evidence from panel quantile regression. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 33085–33102 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-09167-4

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