Financial development, economic growth, globalisation and environmental quality in BRICS economies: evidence from ARDL bounds test approach

The current world is seeking balance between achieving economic and financial growth and shielding earth's environment. The 13th goal (climate action) among 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is an outcome of the same concern. The ample body of the literature tries to analyse the inter-linkages among financial development, economic growth, globalisation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but their results do not reach a consensus. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations have emerged as a dominant force in recent years, but their growth stories are tainted with the increased environmental issues. The present study tries to analyse the same nexus from 1991 to 2020 using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach for BRICS nations. The empirical findings suggest strong long-run and short-run positive implications of financial development, and negative implications of economic growth and globalisation on GHG emissions in all four nations except China. The study is distinct as it extensively analyses the interdependence between GHG emissions and financial development using 9 different sub-indices.