Innovations, energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in the global world countries: An empirical investigation

Abstract

Technological innovations are the important sources of economic growth of a country and it is inter associated with other factors such as energy consumption, economic growth and carbon dioxide emission. A change in these factors affect the capability of technological innovation and thus the effect of these factors on innovations need to be explored. This study investigates the effect of carbon dioxide, energy consumption and economic growth on innovations proxies by different innovations indicators. The sample data is collected from 1980 to 2019 of the world 181 countries and OLS, fixed effect, two step Generalized method of moments and panel quantile regression models were employed for data analysis. The results reveal that carbon dioxide and economic growth increase technological innovations while the inflow of FDI decrease innovations output. Energy consumption also negatively affects innovation indicators except for research and development. In the case of quantile regression, energy consumption is positive while carbon dioxide and foreign direct investment are negative across different quantiles for research and development. Energy consumption and foreign direct investment reduce technological innovations proxy by patent application residents while carbon dioxide and economic growth increase it. The findings of this study have considerable policy suggestions for the global countries.