Publication:
The nexus of financial development, institutional quality and environment: do Islamic countries differ?
Abstract
This paper attempts to examine the relationship of financial development with environmental quality, incorporating the role of institutional quality. There are three objectives of this study which are: to examine the impact of financial development on environmental quality and to ascertain the existence of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC); to examine the role of institutional quality in the relationship; and to highlight differences, if any, between Islamic countries and non-Islamic countries on the said relationship. This research applies generalized method of moments (GMM) for estimation which is the most suitable estimator to manage the unobserved fixed-effects and endogeneity issue between dependent and independent variables. Average 3-years data is used from World Development Indicator of World Bank and ICRG database of 72 countries globally and with period ranging from of 1980 to 2012. The dependent variable is environmental quality while independent variables are financial development, GDP per capita, energy use, trade openness and institutional quality. The results from the GMM estimation suggests that financial development have significant impact on environmental quality. However, the direction of the impact is inconsistent, depending on the type of emission. In addition, there is an evidence of EKC relationship between environmental quality and income. Energy use has a significant and positive impact on environmental quality, although trade openness has no significant impact on environmental quality. The study further analyses the role of institutional quality on these relationships and proves that institutional quality does play a role in reinforcing financial development to improve environmental quality. Nonetheless, the degree of impact varies with the strength of the institutional quality.
Keywords
Financial development , Environmental quality , Institutional quality , Greenhouse gases , Carbon emission , Trade openness , Energy , Islamic countries
Citation
Abdul Hamid, Z. (2022). The nexus of financial development, institutional quality and environment: do Islamic countries differ? (Doctoral dissertation). INCEIF, Kuala Lumpur. Retrieved from https://ikr.inceif.org/handle/INCEIF/3791
Publisher
INCEIF
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