Carbon Tax, Macroeconomic Stability, and the Growth Rate of GDP per Capita: Panel Evidence from Carbon-Pricing Economies

This study examines the short-run effect of carbon taxation on the growth rate of GDP per capita, the annual first difference in log GDP per capita, using a panel of 16 carbon-pricing economies spanning Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa over 2020–2024. Country fixed-effects estimation with country-clustered robust standard errors follows formal model selection (F-test, Hausman test), checked for cross-sectional dependence. Three baseline specifications are estimated, Model 3 excluding the COVID-19 dummy as a robustness check; a fourth adds carbon tax interaction terms with inflation, investment, energy intensity and political stability to test whether these factors condition the relationship. A higher carbon tax rate has a small but statistically significant negative effect on growth across all three baseline models (a USD 10 increase implies roughly a 1.2-percentage-point reduction in annual growth, preferred specification); none of the interaction terms is significant, indicating no detectable conditioning effect. Investment shows a robust positive association with growth; inflation, a robust negative one. Energy intensity and the COVID-19 dummy enter with signs contrary to expectations once year fixed effects are excluded, and the carbon tax coefficient loses significance under a lagged specification, cautioning against a strictly causal reading. Findings support pairing carbon tax design with investment and price-stability policies.