Abstract

This paper seeks to assess if there is any evidence that Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) have caused global warming during 1969 to 1998. The choice of the period of study is driven by the historical fact that the accumulation of CFCs in the atmosphere increased during this phase and the global temperature also registered steady increases. By exploiting a data set on accumulated CFCs along with changes in the global temperature we bring two new insights to the literature on global warming and CFCs: first and foremost, we introduce an Autoregressive Distributed Lagged (ARDL) model to capture the long-term relationship between CFCs and global warming. By doing this we establish that a statistically significant long-run relationship exists between CFCs and global warming. Secondly, we also establish that the nature of this relationship is rather counter-intuitive: the growth in the concentration of CFCs in the atmosphere, as our study finds, has reduced the increases in the global temperature during 1969 -1998. There is thus little empirical support that the CFCs are a source of global warming.

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