Impact of financial development and economic growth on environmental quality: an empirical analysis from Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries

This study aims to analyze the impact of financial development, foreign direct investment, economic growth, electricity consumption, and trade openness on environmental quality for a panel of 59 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries, over the period of 1980–2016. The presence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis is investigated. The cross-sectional augmented Dickey-Fuller (CADF) and cross-sectional Im, Pesaran, and Shin panel unit root test; the Westerlund cointegration test, the dynamic seemingly unrelated regression (DSUR) approach; and the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (Econ Model 29:1450–1460, 2012) panel causality approach are employed. It is found that the analyzed variables are stationary at first differences and are cointegrated. It is also found that an increase in financial development, foreign direct investment, and trade openness enhance environmental quality, while the increase in economic growth and electricity consumption degrade environmental quality. The presence of the EKC hypothesis for the selected panel countries is validated. Furthermore, the Dumitrescu-Hurlin (DH) panel causality test result confirmed the presence of bidirectional causality among economic growth, foreign direct investment, financial development, electricity consumption, and trade openness with environmental quality.