The effect of urbanization and industrialization on carbon emissions in Turkey: evidence from ARDL bounds testing procedure

This paper examines the dynamic short- and long-term relationship between per capita GDP, per capita energy consumption, financial development, urbanization, industrialization, and per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions within the framework of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for Turkey covering the period from 1974 to 2013. According to the results of the autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach, an increase in per capita GDP, per capita energy consumption, financial development, urbanization, and industrialization has a positive effect on per capita CO2 emissions in the long term, and also the variables other than urbanization increase per capita CO2 emissions in the short term. In addition, the findings support the validity of the EKC hypothesis for Turkey in the short and long term. However, the turning points obtained from long-term regressions lie outside the sample period. Therefore, as the per capita GDP increases in Turkey, per capita CO2 emissions continue to increase.