The CO2 emissions-development nexus revisited

This study revisited the CO2 emissions-development nexus. For this purpose, a comprehensive analysis was performed using recent and extensive datasets and employing three different econometric methods, namely, the cross-sectional regression, the cointegrating regression and the threshold regression. The findings revealed that an environmental regime transformation had occurred in the relationship between the CO2 emission intensity and economic development. Thus, the results indicated that in recent decades the inverted N-shaped cubic relationship between these variables transformed into the inverted U-shaped quadratic relationship. By contrast, as far as the relationship between the CO2 emission per capita and economic development is concerned, the U-shaped relationship between the variables remained unchanged. In other words, the present study has detected the inverted U-shaped or the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) relationship between the CO2 emission intensity and economic development; however, it was unable to validate the EKC relationship between the CO2 emission per capita and economic development.