Energy use, CO2 emission and foreign direct investment: Is there any inconsistence between causal relations?

In this study, the causal relations between inward foreign direct investment (FDI) -energy use per capita and inward FDI-CO2 emission per capita were analyzed and the inconsistency between the causal relations was investigated via bootstrap-corrected panel causality test and cross-correlation analysis. In this direction, data from 76 countries including the period of 1980-2009 was processed. No supportive evidence was found for changing causal relations to country group which was classified into income level. The findings indicated that while the pollution haven hypothesis was supported for Mozambique, United Arab Emirates and Oman, the pollution halo hypothesis was supported in the case of India, Iceland, Panama and Zambia. For other countries, energy use and CO2 emission were neutral to inward FDI flows in aggregated level. Furthermore, this study urged that increased (decreased) energy use due to the inward FDI flows did not necessarily mean an increase (decrease) in pollution level, and vice versa. For policy purpose, FDI attractive policy should be regulated by taking into account this possibility.