Energy, Emissions, Renewable Efficiency and Countries' Productive Performance. Is There Any Link?

Abstract

This article provides a first step towards understanding the combined impact of energy, renewable and CO2 efficiency on countries’ overall productive performance. To this aim we employ a global-level data-set of 124 countries for the period 1990-2014. Overall, our analysis supports the idea that incentivizing energy efficient practices should result in more efficient productive processes and, as a consequence, in further economic growth. However, our results evidence strong heterogeneity across different groups of countries. As a consequence, we argue that the international environmental reforms agenda should not follow a one size fits all approach and, especially in relation to less developed economies, it should go hand in hand with other kinds of
reforms.

Keywords: Technological heterogeneity, Metafrontier, Energy efficiency, Hansen threshold methodology

JEL Classification: D24, O13, O47, Q40