Green growth: Theory and evidence

What are the major determinants of green growth? What role can the government play to promote green growth? To address these questions, this paper develops a simple Green Solow model that sheds light on the role of finance and technology in the process of green growth. The empirical section of the article augments this canonical green growth model to include structural variables relating to finance, technological development, trade openness, natural resource exploitations, and areas where the government can play an important role. In addition, the use of the spatially-corrected generalized method moments approach affords us to explore the role of such factors as growth performance of the neighbouring countries, domestic learning or determination to achieve its national desired target, and political and economic shocks in the process of green growth. It is hoped that research reported in the paper will stimulate further research in the area.