Abstract
This paper examines the effect of ICT and FDI on environmental pollution in major Asia Pacific countries during the year 1990–2018. We use Pooled Mean Group (PMG) and Dumitrescu-Hurlin Panel Causality for the estimation of the results. Our results suggest that ICT and FDI affect the carbon emissions or environmental pollution negatively. This implies that with the rise in ICT infrastructure and FDI inflows, environmental pollution decreases significantly in the long run. The Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality results suggest the existence of bidirectional causality among ICT and FDI which implies that increase in foreign investment leads to increase in ICT infrastructure and also, with increasing ICT infrastructure, the foreign investment increases in the Asia Pacific countries. On the policy forefront, the main focus should be targeted towards promoting FDI and ICT infrastructure in order to facilitate sustainable economic development in the Asia Pacific countries.
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The authors are grateful to the Editor-in-Chief and Editor, Prof. Eyup Dogan and anonymous referees of the journal for their extremely useful suggestions for the improvement of this paper. The usual disclaimers apply.
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The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the World Development Indicators (2019).
Links: https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators#
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All the authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection was performed by PB and NS and analysis was performed by PCP. The first draft of the manuscript was written by PB and PCP; and NS commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Appendix
Appendix
Global ICT developments (2005-2018). Source: Measuring the Information Society Report, International Telecommunications Union (ITU), 2018
FDI inflows in Asia Pacific (1990-2019). Source: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 2019
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Bhujabal, P., Sethi, N. & Padhan, P.C. ICT, foreign direct investment and environmental pollution in major Asia Pacific countries. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 42649–42669 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13619-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13619-w