The Impact of the Digital Economy on CO 2 Emissions: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

Xiaoyan Li, Jia Liu and Peijie Ni
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Xiaoyan Li: School of Economics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
Jia Liu: School of Economics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
Peijie Ni: School of Economics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 13, 1-15

Abstract: Since the Industrial Revolution, human activities have led to the emission of a lot of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, sharply increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and resulting in serious global warming. With the rapid development of computer technology, the digital economy is gradually becoming the engine of economic growth. As a new economic mode, how the digital economy affects the environment is worth studying. In this paper, we introduced the digital economy into the Solow growth model as technological progress and conducted fixed-effects regressions based on the global panel data of 190 countries from 2005 to 2016. We found an inverted U-shaped, non-linear relationship between CO 2 emissions and the digital economy, which supports the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. We suggest that governments need to not only adopt hedging policies to reduce CO 2 emissions caused by the digital economy in the early stage but also promote the development of the digital economy to achieve the goal of global collaborative environmental protection.

Keywords: digital economy; CO 2 emissions; air pollution; Environmental Kuznets Curve (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

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