Energy Consumption, Economic Growth and CO2 Emissions in Middle East and North African Countries

Mohamed El Hedi AROURI (), Adel Ben Youssef (), M'henni, Hatem () and Christophe Rault ()
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Adel Ben Youssef: University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis
M'henni, Hatem: University of Manouba
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Hatem MHENNI ()

No 6412, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: This article extends the recent findings of Liu (2005), Ang (2007), Apergis et al. (2009) and Payne (2010) by implementing recent bootstrap panel unit root tests and cointegration techniques to investigate the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption, and real GDP for 12 Middle East and North African Countries (MENA) over the period 1981–2005. Our results show that in the long-run energy consumption has a positive significant impact on CO2 emissions. More interestingly, we show that real GDP exhibits a quadratic relationship with CO2 emissions for the region as a whole. However, although the estimated long-run coefficients of income and its square satisfy the EKC hypothesis in most studied countries, the turning points are very low in some cases and very high in other cases, hence providing poor evidence in support of the EKC hypothesis. Thus, our findings suggest that not all MENA countries need to sacrifice economic growth to decrease their emission levels as they may achieve CO2 emissions reduction via energy conservation without negative long-run effects on economic growth.

Keywords: energy consumption; Environmental Kuznets Curve; growth; carbon dioxide emissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q43 Q53 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-fdg
Date: 2012-03
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Published in: Energy Policy, 2012, 45, 342 - 349

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Related works:
Journal Article: Energy consumption, economic growth and CO2 emissions in Middle East and North African countries (2012)
Working Paper: Energy Consumption, Economic Growth and CO2 Emissions in Middle East and North African Countries (2012)
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