Growth-corruption-health triaca and environmental degradation: empirical evidence from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand

This study examines the impact of economic growth, corruption, health, and poverty on environmental degradation for three countries from ASEAN, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand using annual data over the period of 1994–2014. The relationship between environmental degradation (pollution) by carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and economic growth is examined along with some other variables, namely health expenditure, poverty, agriculture value added growth, industrial value added growth, and corruption. The ordinary least squares (OLS) method is applied as an analytical technique for parameter estimation. The empirical results reveal that almost all variables are statistically significant at the 5% level of significance, whereby test rejects the null hypotheses of non-cointegration, indicating that all variables play an important role in affecting the environment across countries. Empirical results also indicate that economic growth has significant positive impact, while health expenditures show significantly negative impact on the environment. Corruption has significant positive effect on environment in the case of Malaysia; while in the case of Indonesia and Thailand, it has insignificant results. However, for the individual analysis across countries, the regression estimate suggests that economic growth has a significant positive relationship with environment for Indonesia, while it is found insignificantly negative and positive in the case of Malaysia and Thailand, respectively, during the period under the study. Empirical findings of the study suggest that policy-makers require to make technological-friendly environment sequentially to surmount unregulated pollution, steady population transfers from rural areas to urban areas are also important, and poverty alleviation and better health provision can also help to improve the environment.