The trade-off between GDP and CO2 emissions in poor countries: A dynamic common correlated effects approach for unbalanced panel data

Abstract In recent years, the term "climate change" has been increasingly receiving a lot of attention from scholars and policy makers, adversely affecting the lives of people (mostly of the poor) around the world in the present, and threatening the environment quality in the future. With many concerns about environmental degradation, countries tend to transform economic growth models causing negative impacts on the environment, especially for those in the stage of industrialization and modernization. This study was aimed at investigating the trade-offs between economic development and climate change among poor nations – the most affected by and most likely causing to climate change. By using a dynamic common correlated effects approach for unbalanced panel data which deals with cross-sectional dependency and time-series persistence, the paper showed that GDP is strongly correlated to CO2 emissions both in the short and long run, and one of the reasons is the use of CO2-generating energy sources.JEL classification: C23, O44, Q54