Trade and Environmental Quality in African Countries: Do Institutions Matter?

Mina Baliamoune

Eastern Economic Journal, 2017, vol. 43, issue 1, No 9, 155-172

Abstract: Abstract We examine the impact of trade and political institutions on environmental quality in Africa and explore whether political institutions matter to the trade–environment relationship. We use data from a large group of African countries, covering the period 1990–2008 and two indicators of environmental quality: net forest depletion and CO2 emissions. Results from GMM-SYS estimates suggest that political institutions influence the relationship between trade and environmental quality only in the case of CO2 emissions. Interestingly, we find that polity has a U relationship with net forest depletion. In addition, the results are in favor of an environmental Kuznets curve in the case of pollution but not in the case of net forest depletion. Finally, the results suggest that urbanization has a positive and linear impact on CO2 emissions, while it has a U-shaped relationship with deforestation. We discuss the policy implications of these findings.

Keywords: Africa; environmental quality; deforestation; CO2 emissions; trade; institutions; F18; O13; Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41302-016-0076-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Trade and Environmental Quality in African Countries: Do Institutions Matter? (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:easeco:v:43:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1057_s41302-016-0076-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/41302

DOI: 10.1057/s41302-016-0076-8

Access Statistics for this article

Eastern Economic Journal is currently edited by Allan Zebedee and Cynthia Bansak

More articles in Eastern Economic Journal from Palgrave Macmillan, Eastern Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().