Nonlinearity in the relationship between COVID-19 cases and carbon damages: controlling financial development, green energy, and R&D expenditures for shared prosperity

Abstract

The world faces a high alert of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), leading to a million deaths and could become infected to reach a billion numbers. A sizeable amount of scholarly work has been available on different aspects of social-economic and environmental factors. At the same time, many of these studies found the linear (direct) causation between the stated factors. In many cases, the direct relationship is not apparent. The world is unsure about the possible determining factors of the COVID-19 pandemic, which need to be known through conducting nonlinearity (indirect) relationships, which caused the pandemic crisis. The study examined the nonlinear relationship between COVID-19 cases and carbon damages, managing financial development, renewable energy consumption, and innovative capability in a cross section of 65 countries. The results show that inbound foreign direct investment first increases and later decreases because of the increasing coronavirus cases. Further, the rise and fall in the research and development expenditures and population density exhibits increasing coronavirus cases across countries. The continued economic growth initial decreases later increase by adopting standardized operating procedures to contain coronavirus disease. The inter-temporal relationship shows that green energy source and carbon damages would likely influence the coronavirus cases with a variance of 17.127% and 5.440%, respectively, over a time horizon. The policymakers should be carefully designing sustainable healthcare policies, as the cost of carbon emissions leads to severe healthcare issues, which are likely to get exposed to contagious diseases, including COVID-19. The sustainable policy instruments, including renewable fuels in industrial production, advancement in cleaner production technologies, the imposition of carbon taxes on dirty production, and environmental certifications, are a few possible remedies that achieve healthcare sustainability agenda globally.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; Carbon damages; Financial development; Population density; Renewable energy consumption; Switching regression.

Fig. 1

COVID-19 cases in 65 most effected countries of the world. Source: Worldometer (, 18 February 2021

Fig. 2

Trend analysis of economic and environmental factors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Source: Worldometer (, 18 February 2021 and World Bank (2021). COVID19_CASES show coronavirus cases, FDI shows foreign direct investment inflows, REC shows renewable energy consumption, RND shows research and development expenditures, and CDAM shows carbon damages

Fig. 3

U-shaped and inverted U–shaped relationships between COVID-19 cases and economic and environmental factors