Persistence in carbon footprint emissions: an overview of 92 countries

Abstract

The existing studies on persistence of ecological footprint have largely concentrated on the aggregate ecological footprint without adequately considering its components. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the existing papers on ecological footprint by examining the persistence of carbon footprint emissions for a group of 92 countries. Unlike the extant papers, this paper uses fractional integration, which allows the consideration of stationary I(0) and nonstationary I(1) cases as particular models of interest, being therefore more general and flexible than these two classical representations. The results indicate that only 25 of the 92 countries display mean reversion, with orders of integration strictly below 1 and showing transitory shocks, most of them belonging to lower middle- and low-income countries. In these 25 countries it might not be easy to change the long-run path of the carbon footprint as any policy shocks will have temporary effects. The foregoing findings can help policymakers in each nation to design efficient emission-reducing policies.

Keywords

• carbon emissions
• nonstationarity
• unit roots
• fractional integration