Effects Of CO2 Emissions On Economic Growth, Urbanization And Welfare: Application To Mena Countries

This paper has investigated the impact of CO2 emissions on per capita growth, energy consumption, life expectancy and urbanization in MENA countries (Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Emirates Arabs, Jordan, Saudi Arabs, Morocco, Qatar, Tunisia and Yemen) from 1990 to 2010. The empirical results have covered two time horizons: the short and long term. Indeed, in the short term we noticed for all countries of our sample, that the CO2 emission is explained by energy consumption and economic growth per capita which exert positive and significant effects. However, we noticed that the CO2 emission is always positively influenced by energy consumption and negatively influenced by life expectancy. Also, the effect of income per capita is negative and significant which means that the long-term economic strategy of these countries is based on activities and non-polluting sectors. In other words, growth-generating economic potential are located in non-polluting sectors and not generators of greenhouse gas.