Abstract
This study seeks to contribute to the recent literature by empirically investigating the causal effect of urban population growth and international trade on environmental pollution of China, for the period 1980–2014. The Johansen cointegration confirmed a long-run cointegration association among the utilised variables for the case of China. The direction of causality among the variables was, consequently, investigated using the recent bootstrapped Granger causality test. This bootstrapped Granger causality approach is preferred as it provides robust and accurate critical values for statistical inferences. The findings from the causality analysis revealed the existence of a bi-directional causality between import and urban population. The three most paramount variables that explain the environmental pollution in China, according to the impulse response function, are imports, urbanisation and energy consumption. Our study further established the presence of an N-shaped environmental Kuznets curve relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution of China. Hence, our study recommends that China should adhere to stricter environmental regulations in international trade, as well as enforce policies that promote energy efficiency in the urban residential and commercial sector, in the quest to mitigate environmental pollution issues as the economy advances.
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Funding
This work was supported by the Korean National Research Foundation Grant, funded by the Korean government [NRF-2014S1A2A2027622], and supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China under grants 71471076, 71171099, 71373818 and 71201071 and by the Joint Research of the NSFC-NRF Scientific Cooperation Program under grant 71411170250 and by the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education under grant 20123227110011. This work was also sponsored by the Qing Lan Project of Jiangsu Province and Jiangsu University Top Talents Training Project.
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Boamah, K.B., Du, J., Boamah, A.J. et al. A study on the causal effect of urban population growth and international trade on environmental pollution: evidence from China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 5862–5874 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-0882-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-0882-5