Environmental impact of economic growth, emission and FDI: systematic review of reviews

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to organize the detailed review of economic growth, carbon emission and foreign capital inflows and its impact on the environment. Another objective of the study is to provide the comprehensive bibliography and to analyze the findings and results of the studies undertaken in review. Design/methodology/approach - This paper examined 111 research papers from a sample of thousands of papers, based on inclusion criteria, in this area of research. These 111 research papers are categorized on the basis of several factors to know the status of research on this topic. Findings - This study is based on economic development and carbon emission and its impact on the environment. We tried to gather all the available facts based on this topic and found that the topic is gaining high relevance in the present scenario because of the growing pace of development in developing countries. Most of the studies supported the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis and we also found that significant amount of literature is available which supports cleaner FDI as a measure to mitigate the negative effects of economic growth on the ecological environment. Originality/value - Based on the literature review from various sources, this study provides the collection, classification and comprehensive bibliography on this topic, which may be helpful for stakeholders such as academicians, researchers and policymakers working particularly in this area of research.