Waldemar Tarczyński

University of Szczecin,

Poland

waldemar.tarczynski@usz.edu.pl

ORCID 0000-0003-0499-7680

Military spending and CO2 emissions: Empirical findings from countries with highest per capita military spending

Łukasz Roman

University of Justice, 

Warsaw, Poland

lukasz.roman@swws.edu.pl

ORCID 0000-0002-4159-3557

Krzysztof Rejman

Rzeszow University of Technology,

Poland

k.rejman@prz.edu.pl

ORCID 0000-0001-6790-8775

Raufhon Salahodjaev

Akfa University, Uzbekistan,

Tashkent State University of Economics, Uzbeksitan

salahodjaev@gmail.com 

ORCID 0000-0002-5578-811X

Sardor Azam

Akfa University,

Uzbekistan

sazam@wiut.uz 

Abstract. This study aims to contribute to existing research on CO2 emissions by focusing on military spending. We use data from 47 countries with the highest levels of per capita military spending over the period from 2000 to 2015. The results from the two-stage GMM estimator suggest a positive relationship between defence spending and CO2 emissions: 1% increase in per capita military spending leads to a 0.05% increase in CO2 emissions per capita. GDP per capita has an inverted U-shaped relationship with CO2 emissions, which confirms the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Renewable energy is also found to mitigate CO2 emissions. Some policy implications of this study are discussed.

Received: December, 2022

1st Revision: February, 2023

Accepted: May, 2023

DOI: 10.14254/2071-8330.2023/16-2/14

JEL Classification: Q50

Keywords: CO2 emissions, renewable energy, military spending