Does patents on environmental technologies matter for the ecological footprint in the USA? Evidence from the novel Fourier ARDL approach

Climate change has become a global phenomenon due to its threat to sustainable development. However, economic development plays a complementary role in both climate change and sustainability. Thus, the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is critical to climate change policy formulation and development strategies. Accordingly, this study examined the validity of environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis by investigating the relationship between economic growth, energy consumption, financial development, and ecological footprint for the period from 1977 to 2013 in 11 newly industrialized countries. For this purpose, the study employed both augmented mean group (AMG) estimator and heterogeneous panel causality method which are suitable for dependent and heterogeneous panels. The results of the estimator show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and ecological footprint. According to the causality test results, it is concluded that there is bi-directional causality between economic growth and ecological footprint.