The Effect of External Debt on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Carrera, Jorge, de la Vega, Pablo
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2022
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author Carrera, Jorge
de la Vega, Pablo
author_facet Carrera, Jorge
de la Vega, Pablo
contents We estimate the causal effect of external debt on greenhouse gas emissions in a panel of 78 emerging market and developing economies over the 1990-2015 period. Unlike previous literature, we use external instruments to address the potential endogeneity in the relationship between external debt and greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, we use international liquidity shocks as instrumental variables for external debt. We find that dealing with the potential endogeneity problem brings about a positive and statistically significant effect of external debt on greenhouse gas emissions: a 1 percentage point (pp.) rise in external debt causes, on average, a 0.5% increase in greenhouse gas emissions. One possible mechanism of action could be that, as external debt increases, governments are less able to enforce environmental regulations because their main priority is to increase the tax base to pay increasing debt services or because they are captured by the private sector who owns that debt and prevented from tightening such regulations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2206_01840
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Effect of External Debt on Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Carrera, Jorge
de la Vega, Pablo
General Economics
Economics
We estimate the causal effect of external debt on greenhouse gas emissions in a panel of 78 emerging market and developing economies over the 1990-2015 period. Unlike previous literature, we use external instruments to address the potential endogeneity in the relationship between external debt and greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, we use international liquidity shocks as instrumental variables for external debt. We find that dealing with the potential endogeneity problem brings about a positive and statistically significant effect of external debt on greenhouse gas emissions: a 1 percentage point (pp.) rise in external debt causes, on average, a 0.5% increase in greenhouse gas emissions. One possible mechanism of action could be that, as external debt increases, governments are less able to enforce environmental regulations because their main priority is to increase the tax base to pay increasing debt services or because they are captured by the private sector who owns that debt and prevented from tightening such regulations.
title The Effect of External Debt on Greenhouse Gas Emissions
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.01840