Study of Factors Affecting Carbon Emissions— Based on an Empirical Analysis of ASEAN

This paper uses a VAR model to empirically analyze the impact of economic growth, financial development, and urbanization on carbon emissions of the ASEAN countries from 2000 to 2013. The empirical results show that economic growth and carbon emissions, and financial development and carbon emissions have unidirectional Granger causality relationships. Economic growth and urbanization will increase carbon emissions, while financial development will reduce carbon emissions during the initial stage but have little impact on carbon emissions over the long term. Economic growth and urbanization are the main variables to forecast the degree of variance of carbon emissions, while financial development is the least important variable to forecast the degree of variance of carbon emissions. Finally, this study puts forward policy suggestions on improving environmental quality as economic growth, financial development and urbanization occur.