The Distribution Dynamics of Carbon Dioxide Emissions Intensity across Chinese Provinces: A Weighted Approach

• Main Authors: Jian-Xin Wu, Ling-Yun He
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2017-01-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: carbon dioxide emissions; weighted kernel estimation; distribution dynamics; conditional distribution; Chinese provinces
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/1/101

This paper examines the distribution dynamics of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions intensity across 30 Chinese provinces using a weighted distribution dynamics approach. The results show that CO2 emissions intensity tends to diverge during the sample period of 1995–2014. However, convergence clubs are found in the ergodic distributions of the full sample and two sub-sample periods. Divergence, polarization, and stratification are the dominant characteristics in the distribution dynamics. Weightings with economic and population sizes have important impacts on current distributions and hence long-run steady distributions. Neglecting the size of the economy may underestimate the deterioration in the long-run steady state. The result also shows that conditioning on space and income cannot eliminate the multimodality in the long-run distribution. However, capital intensity has an important impact on the formation of convergence clubs. Our findings will contribute to an understanding of the spatial dynamic behaviors of CO2 emissions across Chinese provinces, and have important policy implications for CO2 emissions reduction in China.