Economic and Environmental Factors Determining the Amount of Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the MENA Countries

Abstract: The gradual warming of the earth and its negative environmental and economic impacts contributed to pay attention to sustainable development considerably. Since climate change is a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2, countries are seeking to prevent the rapid growth of emissions to reduce global climate change. Accordingly, and considering the importance of the subject, the present study examines the effects of variables such as per capita income, population, energy consumption structure, energy intensity, degree of trade openness, industry share of GDP on carbon dioxide emissions in MENA countries, during 1993-2015 based on the regression model of population stochastic effects, Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STRIPAT) and Spatial Durbin Panel Data Model (SDPDM). The results of this study indicate that the logarithm of GDP, population, energy structure and energy intensity have a positive and significant effect on carbon dioxide emissions, and the degree of trade openness has a negative and significant effect on carbon emissions. In addition, the positive and significant effect of the intermittent spatial variable indicates that carbon emissions are highly relevant among different regions. In general, the results of model estimation show that attention is more important to spatial correlation, heterogeneity and external effects in policymaking.