The roles of globalization, renewable energy and technological innovation in improving air quality: Evidence from the world’s 60 most open countries

Abstract

Air pollution is considered by many researchers to be one of the causes of global warming, with detrimental effects on the environment, economy, and society. Therefore, identifying the roles of some possible factors for air pollution is an important research agenda. To this end, using unbalanced panel data, this study endeavours to explore the roles of globalization, technological innovation and renewable energy in identifying the factors of air pollution and thus in improving air quality for the world’s 60 most open countries over the period 1960–2020. A series of econometrics tools, for example Driscoll and Kraay’s (1998) standard error technique and the Panel Corrected Standard Error (PCSE) model are used, focusing on of autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity, and cross-sectional dependence problems to obtain robust outcomes. The results demonstrate that trade openness, technological innovation, and per capita GDP have positive effects, and renewable energy and square per capita GDP have negative effects the on air quality. The pair-wise Granger causality also discloses the one-way and two-way causal affiliation between the considered variables. All the findings are valid in terms of both theoretical and empirical grounds and are significant for policy directives.

Keywords

• Air quality
• Renewable energy
• Technological innovation
• Trade openness
• Driscoll and Kraay’s standard error