The study investigates linkages between financial development, income inequality and renewable energy consumption from 39 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The empirical evidence is based on data for the period 2004-2014, Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and Quantile Regressions (QR). The GMM results show that financial development unconditionally promotes renewable energy consumption while income inequality counteracts the underlying positive effect. The QR results reveal that the GMM findings only withstand empirical validity in bottom quantiles of the renewable energy consumption distribution. In order to increase room for policy implications for the promotion of renewable energy consumption, critical masses of income inequality that should not be exceeded are computed for bottom quantiles of the renewable energy consumption distribution while income inequality thresholds that should be exceeded are computed for top quantiles of the renewable energy consumption distribution. The study reconciles two strands of the literature. Theoretical, practical and policy implications are discussed.

中文翻译：

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撒哈拉以南非洲的不平等、金融和可再生能源消费

该研究调查了撒哈拉以南非洲 39 个国家的金融发展、收入不平等和可再生能源消费之间的联系。经验证据基于 2004-2014 年期间的数据、广义矩法 (GMM) 和分位数回归 (QR)。GMM 结果表明，金融发展无条件地促进了可再生能源消费，而收入不平等抵消了潜在的积极影响。QR 结果表明 GMM 的发现仅在可再生能源消费分布的底部分位数中具有经验有效性。为了增加促进可再生能源消费的政策影响空间，不应该超过的收入不平等的临界质量是针对可再生能源消费分布的底部分位数计算的，而应该超过的收入不平等阈值是针对可再生能源消费分布的最高分位数计算的。该研究调和了文献的两个方面。讨论了理论、实践和政策影响。