Abstract

The present study unearths the causal effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU), trade policies, and financial regulation on CO₂ emissions in the United States. Based on this aim, the frequency domain causality and wavelet coherence tests are employed while answering the following questions: (i) Do EPU, trade policy, and financial regulation lead to CO₂ emission in the United States, and (ii) if so, why? The findings from wavelet coherence reveal that changes in EPU, trade policies and financial regulation significantly lead to changes in CO₂ emissions at different frequency levels, meaning that EPU, trade policies, and financial regulation are important predictors for the CO₂ emission in the United States. The consistency of the findings from wavelet coherence is confirmed by the outcomes of frequency domain causality. To the best of our knowledge, until now, no study has explored the causal effect of economic policy uncertainty, trade policies, and financial regulation on the CO₂ emission in the United States using single data set and wavelet coherence approach, which allows capturing both the long and short-run causality among the time series variables while combining time and frequency domain causality approaches. Therefore, the present study is likely to attract great interest from policy-makers and researchers in this field. At the same time, it is likely to start a new debate.

摘要

本研究揭示了经济政策不确定性 (EPU)、贸易政策和金融监管对美国 CO ₂排放的因果影响。基于此目的，在回答以下问题的同时，采用频域因果关系和小波相干性检验：（i）EPU、贸易政策和金融监管是否会导致美国的 CO ₂排放，以及（ii）如果是，为什么？小波相干研究结果表明，EPU、贸易政策和金融监管的变化显着导致不同频率水平的CO ₂排放变化，这意味着EPU、贸易政策和金融监管是CO _{2的重要预测因子}在美国排放。频域因果关系的结果证实了小波相干性研究结果的一致性。据我们所知，到目前为止，还没有研究使用单一数据集和小波相干方法探索经济政策不确定性、贸易政策和金融监管对美国 CO ₂排放的因果影响时间序列变量之间的长期和短期因果关系，同时结合时域和频域因果关系方法。因此，本研究可能会引起该领域政策制定者和研究人员的极大兴趣。与此同时，它很可能会引发新的争论。