Empirical Study On Relationship Among Economic Growth And Urbanization And Carbon Emissions In China And America

Greenhouse gas emissions and global climate warming are widely concerned by theinternational society, which reached the agreement about conserving energy and reduc-ing emissions. As a large developing country, China’ conflict between socioeconomic d-evelopment and ecological environment protection becomes sharply pointed. Thus it isparticularly important to urgently realize sustainable development of social economy.This paper overall considers the relationship among economic growth, and u-rbanization and carbon emissions, and does a cross-country comparative study betweenChina and America, which hopes to help the making policy main body to moreobjectively know the development status and trend of economic growth, urbanizationand carbon emissions, and so as to provide guidance and basis for next policy-making.Firstly, selecting the data of economic growth, urbanization and carbon emissionsfrom1985to2010, the empirical analysis of causality among economic growth,urbanization and carbon emissions in China and America is conducted by using Grangercausality test and impulse responses function as well as variance decomposition basedon VAR model. The result shows that there is a direct or indirect causality amongeconomic growth, urbanization and carbon emissions in China and America, but there isunidirectional or bidirectional difference on directions of the causal relationship bet-ween countries. For China, there is a direct bidirectional causality between economicgrowth and urbanization and a indirect unidirectional causality between economicgrowth and carbon emissions, and a direct unidirectional causality between urbanizationand carbon emissions, where urbanization has an significant effect on carbon emissions,and carbon emissions response of standard deviation is positive, and average con-tribution is26.81%; economic growth has an indirectly significant effect on carbonemissions, but not vise versa. For America, there is a direct unidirectional causalitybetween economic growth and urbanization, and a direct bidirectional causality betweeneconomic growth and carbon emissions, and a directly unidirectional causality betweencarbon emissions and urbanization, where economic growth has significantly negativeimpact on carbon emissions,and average contribution was26.41%, and the response ofstandard deviation is always negative; urbanization has no significant effect on carbonemissions, so does the response of standard deviation and the average contribution.Then, it makes a concrete analysis of the influence among economic growth, urbani- zation and carbon emissions, which showed that there is a “black box” effectmechanism among economic growth, urbanization and carbon emissions both in Chinaand in America, consisting of industrial energy effect, and life consumption effect, andphotosynthetic carbon sequestration effect, as well as “growth drag” effect. Theeffect of economic growth and urbanization is significant in China, but reversed in USA.Finally, the importance of the sustainable development of social economy is furtheremphasized, and five suggestions are proposed,including developing low carboneconomy and changing the mode of economic growth, establishing two oriented societyand developing new-type urbanization, using the market mechanism and guiding theenergy-saving, giving full play to the government’s guiding role and strengthening theconstruction of legal system in energy saving and emission reduction, rising open tooutside world level and participating in international low carbon economy cooperationactively.