| چکیده انگلیسی مقاله |
Purpose: Economic development is closely related to the consumption of natural resources. In particular, fossil energy is a vital resource for urbanization and industrialization and the main driving force for the development of a modern society. What is the way to decouple economy from energy or at least coordinate between the two? Globalization is like a modern evolution. By removing barriers among countries and expanding business and investment and sharing technology, it causes economic growth and accelerates it. In this regard, the aim of this research is to test the hypothesis that globalization (economic, social and political) improves the decoupling of economic growth from energy consumption and pollution.
Methodology: The main goal of this research is to investigate the effect of economic, social and political globalization on the decoupling of economic growth from energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in 94 selected countries based on the maximum available data during the period of 2000-2021. For this purpose, based on the literature in the field, a model was chosen and specified in the form of Equations 1 to 6. In these equations, the production coefficients (α1 and β1) are estimates of Tapio's decoupling index. The independent variables in the equations include economic globalization (models 1 and 2), social globalization (models 3 and 4), political globalization (models 5 and 6), economic structure (industry share), energy price, technology, and urbanization. They were entered multiplicatively with production in Equations 1 to 6 in order to estimate their effects on decoupling and identify the change of the decoupling interval:
In these equations, is energy consumption, is carbon dioxide emission, is economic growth, is economic structure, is economic globalization index, is social globalization index, is political globalization index, is energy price, is urbanization share, and is technology. They are all for country i in year t. These equations were calculated using the generalized method of moments (GMM). In addition to its dynamics and ability to solve the problems of autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity, this method poses no problem of endogeneity of explanatory variables.
Findings and discussion: According to the results, the decoupling of economic growth from energy consumption was placed in the first region of the Tapio coordinates, and its value shows a weak decoupling. Specifically, the coefficients of the selected models (1, 3 and 5) were found to be 0.339911, 0.309906 and 0.312093, respectively. The positive effect of economic growth on energy consumption was expected because every economic activity and its development requires energy. The coefficients of the multiplicative variables of economic, social and political dimensions of globalization were -0.06765, -0.003012 and -0.00991939, respectively. Based on these results, if economic growth is accompanied by the three dimensions of globalization, the decoupling of economic growth from energy consumption will be improved. The findings showed that, with these variables, there was no significant change in the decoupling interval. Also, according to the results, despite the worsening effect of economic structure (industry share) on the decoupling of economic growth from energy consumption, the decoupling interval would not change substantially. Of course, this finding was expected because the increase in the share of industry increases both economic growth and energy consumption. The results of this research further showed that the price of energy has worsened the decoupling. On the other hand, technology has expectedly improved the decoupling. Finally, it was shown that urbanization improves the decoupling. Despite these results, the individual and simultaneous effects of these variables do not change the decoupling interval.
Regarding the decoupling of economic growth from pollution (carbon dioxide), the coefficients of the selected models (2, 4 and 6) were 0.318560, 0.109514 and 0.213233, respectively, which indicate a weak decoupling. The coefficients of the multiplicative variables of economic globalization and political globalization were -0.046588 and -0.022803, respectively. Based on these estimates, economic and political dimensions of globalization have improved the decoupling of economic growth from pollution. On the other hand, the coefficient of the multiplicative variable of social globalization was 0.003401, based on which, social globalization has led to the worsening of the decoupling of economic growth from pollution. Also, the coefficients of the multiplicative variable of economic structure (industry share) in the selected models showed that industrialization has worsened the decoupling. Moreover, the multiplicative variable coefficients of energy price in the selected models showed that the increase in the energy price has worsened the decoupling. The coefficients of the multiplicative variable of technology in the selected models, however, suggested that technology improves the decoupling of economic growth from pollution. Finally, according to the results, urbanization has worsened the decoupling of economic growth from pollution. In general, the individual and simultaneous effects of the variables have not caused a serious change in the final interval of decoupling of economic growth from pollution. Wald test was used to check whether the coefficients of the globalization dimensions were significantly different. The results of this test indicated a statistical difference between the coefficients of globalization dimensions and the effect of globalization dimensions on decoupling.
Conclusions and policy implications: The results of the present research show that the economic, social and political dimensions of globalization improve the decoupling of economic growth from energy consumption. According to the results, economic globalization has a greater impact than the other two components of globalization. This can be due to the greater importance of economic fundamentals than social and political variables. Moreover, the economic and political dimensions of globalization improve the decoupling of economic growth from carbon dioxide emissions, but social globalization worsens this decoupling. It is shown that, compared to political globalization, economic globalization has a greater impact on the decoupling of economic growth and pollution, which is due to the dominance of the economic process in globalization. As another finding, technology improves the decoupling of economic growth from energy consumption and pollution. Also, urbanization improves the decoupling of economic growth from energy consumption, but it worsens the decoupling of economic growth from pollution. The main recommendation of the current research is that countries should pay attention to both internal border issues and international interactions in order to control energy consumption, preserve the environment, and reduce pollution. |