Re-visiting the Nexus Between Energy Consumption, Environmental Quality and Health Expenditure in Gulf and North American Regions

Abstract

Abstract The dynamic relationship between energy consumption, environmental quality and health expenditures have been explored at country as well as regional level, but research on the comparison of regions in the paradox of these variables of interest is rare in the body of knowledge. Therefore, this paper attempts to investigate the relationship between energy consumption, environmental quality and health expenditure as the relationship of these variables in the context of GULF and North American regions is center of attention in the research community due to their emerging landscape. We use the data of seven GULF countries and the same number of countries from North American regions using Penal-ARDL and PMG-ARDL for the period 1990 to 2019. Our results demonstrate that energy consumption increases CO2 emission in GULF as well as North American region, but the effect of energy consumption on the health expenditure in GULF region is statistically insignificant which may be due to protective initiatives in GULF region. Whilst, CO2 emissions is contributing to more health expenditures in both regions, indicating that more CO2 emissions threatening the health quality in both regions. Our results are very pivotal to the policy makers in these regions for their strategic landscape to make frameworks that could be effective to obtain health quality and environmental milestones.