This study analyses the relationship between democracy and environmental pollution in the MINT countries using a panel data spanning 1971-2016. It also investigates the interactive effect of income and democracy on CO2 emissions. We used various estimation techniques for the analysis, ranging from the quantile regression, OLS-fixed effect and GLS-random effect regressions with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors to control for cross-sectional dependence while a panel threshold regression is used for robustness check. The results showed existence of long-run relationship between CO2 emissions and the explanatory variables. The quantile regression results for interaction model indicate that economic growth, democracy and trade openness promote environmental pollution via their positive effects on CO2 emissions. Primary energy however reduces pollution across the lower and middle quantiles but enhances it in higher quantiles. The interaction effect is negative and statistically significant across all quantiles. This implies that democracy has a significant role in moderating the impact of income on CO2 emission in the MINT countries. It thus follows that if the MINT countries radically strengthen democracy and enhance income, it would be possible for them to achieve greater economic development and reduce CO2. In addition, a single threshold model is used to identify the asymmetry in response to CO2 emissions at lower and upper levels of democratic regimes. The results showed that once the degree of democracy is above the threshold level, an increase in income would reduce CO2 emissions but once it is below the threshold level, the effect of income becomes insignificant. Based on these results, the MINT countries need to strengthen democracy, enhance income level and relax trade barriers.
Rapid increases in energy consumption and economic growth over the past three decades are considered the driving force behind rising environmental degradation, which remain a threat to people and healthy environment. This study investigates the impact of energy consumption on environmental quality in the MINT countries using a panel PMG/ARDL modelling technique, and the Granger causality test spanning from 1971 to 2017. The empirical results confirm the existence of long-run nexus among the variables employed. The results also reveal that economic growth, energy consumption and bio-capacity have a positive and statistically significant effect on environmental degradation during the long run period. We find that a 1% increase in primary energy consumption leads to 0.4172% increase in environmental deterioration in the long-run period, but it is insignificant in the short run. This implies that energy consumption deteriorates environmental quality through a negative effect of ecological footprint. The result also suggests that as MINT countries increase the use of energy to accelerate pace of economic growth, environmental quality would deteriorate through increased ecological footprints. The coefficient of the error correction term (ect) is negative and significant (- 0.2306), suggesting that ecological footprint, a measure of environmental degradation would converge to its long-run equilibrium in the MINT region by 23.06% speed of adjustment every year due to contribution of economic growth, energy consumption, urbanization and biocapacity. The Granger non-causality test results reveal a unidirectional causal relationship from economic growth, energy consumption, and urbanization to ecological footprint and from economic growth to biocapacity. The results further show bi-directional causality between biocapacity and ecological footprint as well as between biocapacity and economic growth. Moreover, urbanization causes economic growth and biocapacity Granger-causes urbanization. Based on these findings, policy implications are adequately discussed.