Alleviating role of energy innovation on resource curse: a case of OECD countries

Abstract The research motivates to provide some implications about the role of energy innovation (EINN) in the resource curse hypothesis. The significance of EINN is crucial for mitigating the economic and environmental damage caused by the excessive consumption of natural resources (NR). The study aims to inspect the effect of energy consumption (EC), EINN, and NR on the economic growth (EG) of OECD countries from 1990 to 2015. The study emphasizes the importance of EINN by incorporating the EINN in the empirical framework of the resource curse hypothesis (RCH) and contributes to the current research on RCH. The study has used the various advanced econometrics techniques that are robust in controlling the cross-section dependence (CD) and slope heterogeneity of the panel data. The results clarify that EINN is a decisive factor in the analysis of the RCH. The positive association between EINN and EG suggests that EINN is beneficial in improving the EG of OECD countries. The results reveal the negative impact of NR on EG; however, with the inclusion of EINN, the absolute value of the NR’s effect has declined significantly from −0.299% to −0.076% in the long run. The findings suggest that improvements in the EINN are crucial to increase the efficiency and productivity of NR and to avoid the RCH in the OECD countries. Thus, OECD countries should encourage energy innovation policies by promoting their application, so that replacement of traditional energy sources with new energy can be realized. HIGHLIGHTS The importance of energy innovation is expressed in the context of the natural resource curse hypothesis (RCH). Advanced panel data method CS-ARDL is used to control the panel cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity issues. Energy innovation plays a decisive role in alleviating the RCH in the OECD countries.