Globalisation and CO 2 Emissions: Evidence From theWorld’s Largest Emitters

Abstract

The study examines the predictive relationship between political, economic, and social dimensions of globalisation and CO2 emissions across the world's largest emitting countries using a country-level VAR Granger causality framework. Political globalisation Granger-causes emissions in Australia and Japan, whereas emissions exhibit predictive precedence towards political globalisation in the United States. Economic globalisation demonstrates predictive bidirectional causal evidence with emissions in India and Malaysia, while social globalisation exhibits a predictive relationship with emissions in Canada, Japan, and Mexico. The findings highlight substantial heterogeneity in the predictive relationships between dimensions of globalisation and CO2 emissions across countries, reflecting differences in governance structures, industrial composition, and energy dependency patterns. Unlike panel-average estimation approaches, the country-level framework allows the identification of heterogeneous country-specific temporal dynamics across the major emitters. Nevertheless, the findings should be interpreted as a predictive relationship rather than definitive structural causation and may remain sensitive to omitted variables and long-run equilibrium dynamics which are not captured within the short-term VAR framework. The study contributes to additional country-specific evidence relevant to climate governance and sustainability-orientated policy discussions among major emitting economies.