The institutional determinants of CO2 emissionsA computational modelling approach using Artificial Neural Networks and Genetic Programming

Resumen

Understanding the complex process of climate change implies the knowledge of all possible determinants of CO2 emissions. Most of the studies focused on the key role of economic growth on the emissions. Nevertheless, recent trends in economics have highlighted the relevance of the institutional structure of production on economic performance. This paper studies the influence of several institutional determinants on CO2 emissions, clarifying which variables are relevant to explain this influence. For this aim, Genetic Programming and Artificial Neural Networks are used to find an optimal functional relationship between the CO2 emissions and a set of historical, economic, geographical, religious and social variables, which are considered as a good approximation to the institutional quality of a country. Besides this, the paper compares the results using the computational methods with those employing a more traditional parametric perspective. Following the empirical results of the cross-country application, this paper generates new evidence on the binomial institutions and CO2 emissions.