Does increasing investment in research and development promote economic growth decoupling from carbon emission growth? An empirical analysis of BRICS countries

It is generally recognized that increasing research and development investment is an effective measure to promote economic and social progress. An open question is if increasing research and development investment help economic growth decoupling from carbon emission. This study investigates research and development investment and carbon emission in BRICS countries by using the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares for empirical estimation from 1996 to 2014. The results show that every 1% increase in research and development investment, carbon emissions will be decreased by 0.8122% for the BRICS as a whole, which indicates increasing research and development investment has a positive impact on decoupling economic growth from environmental pressure. For individual, this impact is most significant in China, weak in Russia and India. However, it also should be noted that only increasing research and development investment cannot achieve the decoupling between economic growth and carbon emission, because other factors, such as economic activity, industrialization and urbanization, renewable energy also influences the decoupling economic growth from carbon emission. The results also show that economic activity, industrialization and urbanization pose negative impact on the decoupling, whereas renewable energy consumption promote the decoupling. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.