College of Finance and Statistics, Hunan University, Changsha, China.
College of Business Administration, Hunan University, Changsha, China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2020 Sep;27(26):33085-33102. doi: 10.1007/s11356-020-09167-4. Epub 2020 Jun 11.
This paper illustrates the direct and indirect effects of democracy on CO emissions in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) from 1992 to 2018. In view of the distribution heterogeneity of CO emissions, the panel quantile regression model is especially used to explore the nexus among different variables. Furthermore, in order to predict the trends of CO emissions in different countries, we also estimate the kernel density function of CO emissions in the BRICS countries by the quantile-fitted values. The results indicate that the direct impact of democracy on carbon dioxide emissions is significantly negative and great at high-emission countries. Although the indirect effect of democracy is positive in China and negative in Brazil and South Africa, the total effect of democracy on CO emissions remains negative in all BRICS countries. The estimation of kernel density function shows that the distribution of CO emissions in each country is gradually concentrated. Moreover, there is an environmental Kuznets curve depicting the linkage of urbanization and carbon dioxide emissions in Brazil and South Africa. These findings further highlight that the impact of democracy on high-emission and low-emission countries should be taken into account in policymaking to achieve sustainable developments.
本文阐述了 1992 年至 2018 年间，金砖国家（巴西、俄罗斯、印度、中国和南非）民主对二氧化碳排放的直接和间接影响。鉴于二氧化碳排放的分布异质性，我们特别使用面板分位数回归模型来探讨不同变量之间的关系。此外，为了预测金砖国家二氧化碳排放的趋势，我们还通过分位数拟合值来估计金砖国家二氧化碳排放的核密度函数。结果表明，民主对二氧化碳排放的直接影响在高排放国家具有显著的负向影响。尽管民主的间接效应在中国为正，在巴西和南非为负，但民主对二氧化碳排放的总效应在金砖国家仍为负。核密度函数的估计表明，每个国家的二氧化碳排放分布逐渐集中。此外，巴西和南非的城市化和二氧化碳排放之间存在一条环境库兹涅茨曲线。这些发现进一步强调，在制定政策时，应考虑民主对高排放和低排放国家的影响，以实现可持续发展。
