Accounting for Spillovers Effects and Temporal Dynamics on the Impact of Renewebles on Labour Force : A World Perspective

Prompted by the need to reduce the concentration of CO$_2$ in the atmosphere in order to limit global warming, several countries are adopting policies to incentivize the production of clean energy. In this context, a relevant aspect to be examined is the effect of expanding renewable resources on employment. Despite the large use of panel and time series analysis to investigate the topic, most of the econometric models generally consider a very small number of regressors. Furthermore, the spatial component, a potentially important determinant of employment, has been always neglected. By making use of a relatively large dataset of 62 countries spanning for 25 years (from 1990 to 2014), the present paper tries to fill these gaps by specifying a dynamic spatial panel data (SDPD) model with fixed effects and a relatively large number of regressors. The specification of both the individual and time fixed effects allows us to consider both spatial and temporal heterogeneity. In particular, the temporal fixed effects control for the years of economic crises that affect our dataset. Our results confirm the positive role of expanding renewable energy production on employment