Assessing the impact of the economic complexity on the ecological footprint in G7 countries: Fresh evidence under human development and energy innovation processes

Evcimen, Ceren

The G-7 economies include economically developed countries on a global scale. The high economic complexity and ecological behaviour of these countries have led to increased concern in other countries within the conjuncture. For this reason, this study investigates the impact of economic complexity, human development, high innovation processes, and renewable energy consumption on the ecological footprint, presenting as the main novelty the damper effect that human development and innovation processes exert on economic complexity and the global effect on the ecological footprint. This empirical evidence is analyzed under the validation of a U-inverted EKĆs behaviour between ecological footprint and economic complexity for 1991–2018. Our study follows a second-generation perspective that gene...