Asymmetric effect of economic policy uncertainty, political stability, energy consumption, and economic growth on CO2 emissions: evidence from G-7 countries

Abstract

This study deals with the asymmetric effect of economic policy uncertainty and political stability on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions considering also energy consumption and economic growth. In this context, the study investigates G-7 countries, which make up an important part of the world economy. Also, the study uses yearly data between 1997 and 2021 as the most available intersection data for all countries included. Besides, this study applies a novel nonlinear approach as quantile-on-quantile regression (QQR) as the base model, and quantile regression (QR) is used for robustness. The empirical results present that (i) economic policy uncertainty has a decreasing effect on CO2 emissions in Italy, Japan, and the United States of America (USA), whereas it has a mixed effect in Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (UK); (ii) political stability also has a mixed effect on CO2 emissions; (iii) energy consumption has an accelerating effect on CO2 emissions while the power of effect changes at quantiles; (iv) economic growth has generally an increasing effect on CO2 emissions, whereas it has a decreasing effect at lower quantiles in Japan, at middle quantiles in France and Germany, and at higher quantiles in Italy; and (v) the QR results support the robustness of QQR findings. Thus, the empirical results highlight that G-7 countries should consider the asymmetric and quantile-based varying effects of the economic policy uncertainty, political stability, and economic growth to reach their carbon neutrality targets.