Abstract
This study analyses the impact of socio-economic development, renewable energy consumption, education expenditure and foreign direct investment on carbon dioxide emissions in the four Visegrad countries of Central Europe between 1991 and 2021. The Autoregressive-Distributed Lag Bound Testing method was used to test the short- and long-term relationships for each of the dependent variables to verify the hypotheses. The results obtained indicate three bidirectional relationships. For the Czech Republic and Slovakia, changes in carbon emissions can affect changes in the Human Development Index (HDI) and vice versa. Bidirectional causality was also established in the case of Poland between energy consumption from renewable sources and carbon dioxide emissions. Changes in carbon dioxide emissions can affect the country's renewable energy consumption and vice versa. For the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, unidirectional causality was established between the variables indicated. The results of the short-term relationships revealed that in the Visegrad countries there may be an increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the short term with an increase in renewable energy production. Long-term relationships between spending on education and reductions in carbon emissions could only be demonstrated for Slovakia. Toda-Yamamoto tests showed unidirectional causality between foreign direct investment and carbon dioxide emissions for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In contrast, no significant relationship in the long run between carbon dioxide emissions and foreign direct investment was observed for the countries studied. The findings have interesting policy implications for policy makers in the Visegrad countries.