Toward Sustainable Development: Assessing the Effects of Commercial Policies on Consumption and Production-Based Carbon Emissions in Developing Economies

Abstract

Over the last few decades, the available literature on environmental economics hosts numerous environmental issues and underlines their reasons, calling for instant action on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2e). In the same context, the recent article develops a new framework that extends the pertinent literature by linking commercial policies, globalization, labor force, GDP growth, fossil fuel, and renewable energy consumption with consumption and production-based CO2e (CCO2e and PCO2e). To this end, the sample of developing economies is utilized from 1991 to 2016. Further, several advanced techniques are applied for robust findings. The findings reveal that the expansionary and contractionary commercial policies significantly affect CCO2e and PCO2e. Likewise, import taxes also have a significant association with CCO2e and PCO2e. Additionally, the results determine that globalization, labor force, GDP growth, fossil fuel, and renewable energy consumption are the essential drivers of environmental pollution. Besides, the panel causality test establishes a one-way causality which runs from commercial policies, import taxes, globalization, labor force, GDP growth, fossil fuel, and renewable energy consumption to CCO2e and PCO2e. Based on the findings, some relevant implications are also suggested.