Democracy, Financial Openness, and Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Heterogeneity Across Existing Emission Levels

Abstract

The determinants of CO2 emissions have attracted many researchers over the past few decades. Most of studies, however, ignore the possibility that effect of independent variables on CO2 emissions could vary throughout the CO2 emission distribution. We address this issue by applying quantile regression methods. We examine whether greater democracy and more financial openness consistently reduce emissions among the most and least emission nations. Our results show that the effect of democracy on CO2 emissions is heterogeneous across quantiles. Among the most emissions nations, greater democracy appears to reduce emissions, but more financial openness does not appear to reduce it.