Economic impact of CO2 emissions on Thailand's growth and climate change mitigation policy: A modelling analysis

In response to growing concerns about global warming and climate change, numerous energy scenario or computable general equilibrium models have been developed worldwide to provide alerts, mitigation, adaptation, financial and sustainability policy options. However, rigorous evidence-based economic measurement and analysis of the trade-off between CO2 emissions and economic growth for credible climate change policies are still limited globally. To improve analysis, debate and policies in this field with Thailand as a special case-study, the paper develops a new “top down” endogenous growth-CO2 emission multi-equation model with an endogenous Kuznets environmental curve to provide robust empirical findings on the trade-off, its implications for climate change mitigation policy and credible national responses. The findings importantly satisfy the Friedman (1953), Kydland (2006) simplicity and realism criterion. Recommended policies are also critically discussed.