A Panel Examination of Economic Growth and Environmental Pressure in the Middle East and South Asia

Abstract

The study observes the relationship between environmental scarcity and per capita income through carbon dioxide in twenty-six countries from 1990 to 2020. The detailed objective is to find whether the projected associations validate the inverted U-shaped hypothesis as demonstrated by the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Using panel fixed and random effects valuation procedures, the manuscript finds the negative and significant impact of income on pollution, which proves the validity of EKC. But energy consumption, population and industrial sectors have positive effects on the environment. Besides this, we also found inverted U curve status by using generalize method of moments (GMM) technique. Therefore, we reveal that the increase in income will reduce the pollution in our study sample.