The Impact of Economic Growth on CO2 Emissions in Azerbaijan

by Jeyhun I. Mikayilov, Marzio Galeotti and Fakhri J. Hasanov

This paper examines the relationship between the economic growth and CO2 emissions in Azerbaijan. A cointegration analysis is conducted over the period 1992-2013. For getting more robust results, Johansen, ARDLBT, DOLS, FMOLS and CCR methods to explore cointegration and estimate longrun coefficients are employed. We use cubic, quadratic and linear specifications and conclude that the last one is an adequate representation for the impact of the economic growth on CO2 emissions in Azerbaijan.
The results from the different cointegration methods are consistent with each other and show that the economic growth has positive and significant impact on the emissions in the long-run implying that the EKC hypothesis does not hold for Azerbaijan. Moreover, we find that any short-run disequilibrium can be corrected towards the long-run equilibrium path within less than one year. The paper concludes that increasing the energy efficiency can be considered as a relevant environmental policy in order to reduce the carbon emissions.