Assessing the impact of the economic complexity on the ecological footprint in G7 countries

The G-7 economies include economically developed countries on a global scale. The high economic complexity and ecological behaviour of these countries have led to increased concern in other countries within the conjuncture. For this reason, this study investigates the impact of economic complexity,...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Balsalobre Lorente, Daniel, Nur, Tugba, Topaloglu, Emre E., Evcimen, Ceren
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
Repositorio:RUIdeRA. Repositorio Institucional de la UCLM
OAI Identifier:oai:ruidera.uclm.es:10578/36497
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2023.03.017
https://hdl.handle.net/10578/36497
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Economic complexity
Ecological footprint
Environmental Kuznets curve
Human development
High innovation
Renewable energy
G-7 countries
Descripción
Sumario:The G-7 economies include economically developed countries on a global scale. The high economic complexity and ecological behaviour of these countries have led to increased concern in other countries within the conjuncture. For this reason, this study investigates the impact of economic complexity, human development, high innovation processes, and renewable energy consumption on the ecological footprint, presenting as the main novelty the damper effect that human development and innovation processes exert on economic complexity and the global effect on the ecological footprint. This empirical evidence is analyzed under the validation of a U-inverted EKĆs behaviour between ecological footprint and economic complexity for 1991–2018. Our study follows a second-generation perspective that generates reliable and robust results using Cup-FMOLS, Konya panel bootstrap causality and panel VAR analyses under cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity. The long-run elasticity estimates calculated with the Cup-FMOLS approach suggest that economic complexity, human development, high innovation process and interaction variables reduce the ecological footprint. The unidirectional causality from economic complexity and human development to ecological footprint, as well as from economic complexity and human development to the high innovation process, is part of the Konya bootstrap causality test. In addition, a bidirectional causality linkage is revealed between renewable energy consumption and ecological footprint, human development and high innovation process. In G-7 countries, where economic complexity is higher than in other countries, it is crucial to improve environmental quality to ensure sustainable development. The findings show that sustainable development in G-7 countries can be accelerated by improving renewable energy sources, R&D investments and social dimension.