Economic growth, Financial development and CO2 Emission: PSTR Approach

The aim of this paper is to assess the sign and magnitude of the nonlinear effects of main socio-economic variables as well as the financial development index(measured by private credit to GDP ratio) on the environmental pollution. Specifically, the interaction of the socio-economic variables with financial development as a threshold variable in affecting CO2 emission is studied. In this respect the PSTR(Panel Smooth Transition Regression) technique is applied to a panel-data set for 16 middle income countries (including Iran) during the period 1970-2013.It is found that output level and energy use have positive significant effect on CO2 emission on the whole but their effects at higher levels of financial development decrease and increase respectively i.e. financial development has provided motivations for shifting to eco-friendly technologies on the whole but has not been effective for applying fuel efficient technologies . The effect of population on CO2 emission at higher levels of financial development, intensifies . As to the effect of financial development ,it has a positive significant effect on pollution with a threshold level of 34 percent for financial development index i.e. up to this point ,the effect of financial development on the increase of pollution, rises at an increasing rate