School of Finance, Nanjing Audit University, Yushan West Road, Nanjing, 211815, Jiangshu Province, People's Republic of China.
Business School, Hunan University, Yuelu South Road, Changsha, 410082, Hunan Province, People's Republic of China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2019 Aug;26(24):24380-24394. doi: 10.1007/s11356-019-05627-8. Epub 2019 Jun 22.
Economic policy uncertainty (EPU) will affect the external business environment of economic entities, which in turn affects the decision-making of economic entities. Meanwhile, carbon emissions are closely related to the production decisions of microeconomic entities. Thus, studying the relationship between EPU and carbon emissions helps to clarify the impact of institutional factors behind carbon emissions, which is significant for achieving green development. Based on US sector data, we apply a novel parametric test of Granger causality in quantiles to analyze the relationship between EPU and carbon emissions (its growth and uncertainty). We find that there is an outstanding pattern of Granger-causality from the US EPU to the growth of carbon emissions in the tails of the growth distributions of carbon emissions in the industrial sector, residential sector, electric power sector, and transportation sector, except in the commercial sector. That is, carbon emissions are affected by EPU when the growth of carbon emissions is in a higher or lower growth period. Lastly, we find that the US EPU affects carbon emissions uncertainty over the entire conditional distribution for all sectors.
经济政策不确定性（EPU）将影响经济实体的外部商业环境，进而影响经济实体的决策。同时，碳排放与微观经济实体的生产决策密切相关。因此，研究 EPU 与碳排放之间的关系有助于厘清碳排放背后的制度因素的影响，这对于实现绿色发展具有重要意义。基于美国部门数据，我们采用一种新的分位数格兰杰因果关系参数检验方法来分析 EPU 与碳排放（其增长和不确定性）之间的关系。我们发现，在美国 EPU 与工业部门、住宅部门、电力部门和运输部门碳排放增长分布的尾部之间，存在着从美国 EPU 到碳排放增长的显著因果关系模式，除了商业部门。也就是说，当碳排放增长处于较高或较低的增长期时，碳排放会受到 EPU 的影响。最后，我们发现美国 EPU 会影响所有部门整个条件分布的碳排放不确定性。
