EXAMINING THE EXISTENCE OF CO2 EMISSION PER CAPITA CONVERGENCE IN EAST ASIA

Kenichi SHIMAMOTO

Hirao School of Management, Konan University, Nishinomiya, Japan
Correspondence details: Dr. Kenichi Shimamoto Hirao School of Management, Konan University, 8-33 Takamatsu-cho,  Nishinomiya, Hyogo, Japan 663-8204

kenichi@center.konan-u.ac.jp

Abstract

The ‘flying geese’ model of industrial upgrading depicts the income convergence or economic development convergence in East Asia. However, how does this convergence of economic development effect the environment? The surge in the consumption of fossil fuel is causing a large increase in emission of CO2. Global warming affected by CO2 emission poses as a serious threat to East Asian countries with large coastal areas exposed to the rise in sea level. This paper examines CO2 emission per capita to investigate the existence of environmental convergence in East Asian countries and predicts future distribution using deviations, interquartile range, kernel densities distribution, time series approach, β convergence analysis and the Markov chain approach. As a result, no meaningful evidence of convergence was found in the historical evaluation and a non-compressed ergodic distribution was found in the future prediction for CO2 emission.

Keywords: environmental convergence, East Asia, CO2

JEL classification: Q53, Q56, R10

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