What Drives Carbon Emissions in OECD Countries?

The intensification of carbon emissions poses a critical challenge to global ecological stability. This study employs panel quantile regression techniques alongside extensive preliminary diagnostics and robustness analyses to identify the principal determinants of consumption-based carbon emissions across 38 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) members. Empirical findings reveal that demographic scale, economic output, international trade, and technological advancement significantly influence emission levels, lending support to both the trade-adjusted environmental Kuznets curve and the stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology hypotheses. Furthermore, policy instruments such as environmental taxation and green finance play substantive roles in emission mitigation, with green finance demonstrating particular efficacy. This study makes a significant contribution to the current literature on ecological economics by shedding light on the pivotal factors of carbon emissions across various quantiles and cross-sections. JEL Classification: C31, H23, Q54, Q56