Ntarmah Albert Henry, Kong Yusheng, Obeng Anthony Frank, Gyedu Samuel
School of Finance and Economics, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, 212013, People's Republic of China.
School of Management, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, 212013, People's Republic of China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 May;29(21):31807-31845. doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-17947-9. Epub 2022 Jan 11.
In sub-Saharan Africa, economic expansion and its environmental implications have become major problems. The banking system has been described as a mechanism for decoupling economic expansion from environmental implications. However, the function of bank financing in the growth-environmental consequences in SSA remains undeveloped. This study investigated the role of bank financing in economic growth and environmental outcomes in SSA over the period 1990-2018. We implemented the novel panel quantile regression and panel vector autoregressive models in a generalized method of moments' framework to investigate the influence of bank financing on economic growth and carbon emissions, and the moderating effect of bank financing in growth-environmental consequences among the four regional economies in SSA. The empirical results revealed that bank financing (1) increases economic growth and carbon emissions across quantiles; (2) positively influences economic growth and carbon emissions of East and Central African regions but negatively influences economic growth and carbon emissions of the West African region; (3) mitigates growth-emissions outcomes of low-emission countries but worsens growth-emissions outcomes of median and high emission countries; and (4) worsens growth-emissions outcomes of East and Central African regions but mitigates growth-emissions outcomes of Southern and West African sub-regions. The variance decomposition and impulse response results discovered that the role of bank financing in growth-environmental challenges varies in terms of magnitude and elasticities across the sub-regions over the sampled period. The study also revealed mixed findings regarding the existence of the EKC hypothesis for the sub-regional economies in SSA.
在撒哈拉以南非洲地区，经济扩张及其对环境的影响已成为主要问题。银行体系被描述为一种将经济扩张与环境影响脱钩的机制。然而，银行融资在撒哈拉以南非洲地区经济增长与环境后果之间的作用仍未得到充分发展。本研究考察了1990年至2018年期间银行融资在撒哈拉以南非洲地区经济增长和环境结果中的作用。我们在广义矩估计框架下实施了新颖的面板分位数回归和面板向量自回归模型，以研究银行融资对经济增长和碳排放的影响，以及银行融资在撒哈拉以南非洲四个区域经济体的增长-环境后果中的调节作用。实证结果表明，银行融资（1）在各分位数上均促进经济增长和碳排放；（2）对东非和中非地区的经济增长和碳排放有正向影响，但对西非地区的经济增长和碳排放有负向影响；（3）减轻了低排放国家的增长-排放结果，但恶化了中等排放和高排放国家的增长-排放结果；（4）恶化了东非和中非地区的增长-排放结果，但减轻了南部和西非次区域的增长-排放结果。方差分解和脉冲响应结果发现，在抽样期间，银行融资在增长-环境挑战中的作用在各次区域的规模和弹性方面存在差异。该研究还揭示了关于撒哈拉以南非洲地区次区域经济体环境库兹涅茨曲线假说存在与否的混合结果。
