Global disparities of greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture sector: panel club convergence analysis

A lot has been discussed about the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the existing studies; the study on the club convergence of GHG emissions is limited particularly for the agriculture sector. This study tries to investigate the convergence hypothesis across 93 countries spanning 1980-2017. To examine the convergence hypothesis, we implement the novel Phillips and Sul test. Results obtained from this test show the evidence of divergence when we consider all 93 countries as a group. This implies that GHG emissions across the countries are following different convergence paths. To capture this, we further apply clustering algorithms and results show the existence of five clubs of convergence and one group stating the need for altering the policies at the club level to achieve a single steady state in GHG emissions. Moreover, our findings recommend that the mitigation policies should be considered in the presence of different clubs of regions with different convergence paths in terms of GHG emissions and account for the distributional effect of transfers across countries.