A comprehensive analysis of the impact of greenhouse gases, energy usage, institutional quality and globalization on health: A case study of selected developing nations

Abstract

This study inspects the health consequences of greenhouse gases, energy use, institutional quality and globalization for the 23 developing economies. Utilizing panel data from 2000 to 2022, various estimation techniques, including static models (pooled, fixed and random), the two-step systemGeneralized Methods of Moments (GMM and Panel Auto Regressive Distributive Model (PARDL), are applied to investigate the short- and long-term effects of greenhouse gases, energy use, institutional quality and globalization on health. Panel causality tests, Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) are employed to ensure robustness and causal linkage among variables. The results confirmed a positive association between health and its lag value. Institutional quality negatively influences health expenditure, while greenhouse gases, energy use and globalization exhibit an increasing effect on health expenditure. Life expectancy, institutional quality, energy use and globalization have favourable effects, while greenhouse gases negatively affect health outcomes. In Model 1, energy usage and health expenditures have two-way causality, and green house gases and energy use in Model 2 have a bi-directional causal linkage. All variables exhibit unidirectional causality, except globalization and institutional quality, as shown by the Dumitrescu and Hurlin causality test. The study complements the literature by stating that institutional quality is the key instrument for managing the negative consequences of the recent increase in globalization and energy use and their detrimental impact on health in developing economies.