The Impact of Environmental Tax on Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Visegrad Group Countries

The role of environmental tax as an economic instrument to reduce environmental degradation has been under investigation for many years. In this paper, the main research objective is to check whether there were long-term relationships (cointegration) between greenhouse gas emissions, environmental taxes and gross domestic product in Visegrad Group countries under the inverted U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis from 1995 to 2018. It was also checked whether environmental tax has an impact on greenhouse gas emissions. In the first step, the long-run relationship (cointegration) was examined by applying the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds test. In the second step, the causal relationship and direction were tested within the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) framework. The results of ARDL bounds testing confirmed cointegration between Istnieje od / Published since 1931 1(309)2022, 66–78 DOI: 10.33119/GN/145537 gnpje.sgh.waw.pl Bartosz Jóźwik (corresponding author) Katedra Ekonomii Międzynarodowej, Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, Polska Antonina Gavryshkiv Katedra Ekonomii Międzynarodowej, Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, Polska