CO2-emissions from domestic goods transport in countries with high income and high equality : A study of changes in BNP/capita, trade intensity and GINI-index relating to CO2-emissions

Transportation is one of the largest sectors contributing to CO2-emissions, and has doubled its emissions in 30 years. Despite this, studies of the environmental Kuznets curve (”EKC”) often focus on stationary industry emissions. Studies of the EKC have detected an N-shape, rather than an inverted U-curve, indicating that rich nation’s emissions, in fact, increase again after the downturn. Possibly, this could be explained by a trend for inhabitants of wealthy countries with high equality to purchase local products and potentially reverse a trend of dirty-industry emigration. Local production and movement of intermediate goods demand domestic goods transportation. To my knowledge, no previous research has studied how changes in GDP/capita, trade intensity and GINI-index are related to CO2-emissions from domestic goods transportation in wealthy countries with high equality. To study the relationship, mathematical tests using Panel data with Fixed Effects Regression were used. Five countries qualified for the tests, having both high equality (lowest GINI-index) and high GDP/capita, and were included in the study for the year interval 2000-2020. Test results showed a significant correlation between the following: (1) wealth coincides positively with CO2-emissions, (2) trade intensity coincides negatively with CO2-emissions and (3) GINI-index coincides positively with CO2-emissions. Methodologically, this study contributes with the estimator GDP/GINI-index, rather than GDP solely, which could be a better estimator for the richness of a country’s population. The mathematical test results indicate that domestic goods transportation could be a reason for the increased CO2-emissions from developed wealthy countries. This could be a development of the environmental Kuznets curve