The pathway toward pollution mitigation: Does institutional quality make a difference?

Institutions in a country ensure sustainability and play a significant role in economic development by encouraging best practices in governmental interventions. A strong and transparent institutional framework opposes corruption and improves the management of public finances, which may also yield desired outcomes for the environment and society. However, the role of institutions in environmental issues is still under-investigated in the literature. This study aims to investigate the relationship between renewable energy consumption, institutional quality, economic performance, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 18 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries for the period 1992-2015. To this end, robust panel data estimation techniques are employed. The study confirms that a cointegration relationship exists among study variables. Evidence from the empirical results reveals that institutions have beneficial environmental effects. Likewise, renewable energy reduces carbon emissions to mitigate climate change, but nonrenewable energy harms the environment. Institutional quality helps to form the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis in APEC countries. Finally, causality analysis refers to the unidirectional causality running from institutional quality to CO(2)emissions. Results reveal that stronger institutional arrangements in APEC countries could be the solution for implementations of effective environmental regulation to combat rising environmental challenges without sacrificing higher economic growth

The nexus between economic growth, energy use, international trade and ecological footprints: the role of environmental regulations in N11 countries

Diversified human activities and inappropriate economic growth strategies have induced a trade-off between economic growth and environmental degradation worldwide. Consequently, the aggravating environmental concerns have warranted regulations to be enforced for safeguarding the welfare of the global environment. However, the effectiveness of such environmental regulations in reducing environmental deterioration has received equivocal empirical evidence in the literature. Against this backdrop, this study investigates the influence of environmental regulations on the ecological footprints in the context of the Next Eleven countries between 1990 and 2016. The results from the econometric analysis, controlling for cross-sectional dependency issues in the data, reveal that the existing environmental regulations legislated in the Next Eleven countries are ineffective in reducing the ecological footprints of these nations. Besides, greater energy consumption and openness to international trade are found to boost ecological footprints. Moreover, the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis is also authenticated for the panel of the Next Eleven nations. The country-specific findings indicate that energy consumption anonymously degraded the environment in all the eleven nations, while heterogeneous impacts of environmental regulations, economic growth and international trade on the environment are ascertained. Hence, these findings, in a nutshell, recommend the Next Elevennations to strengthen and enforce the environmental regulations, adopt sustainable economic growth policies, reduce fossil fuel dependency and participate in sustainable trade to ensure environmental sustainability