Government Expenditure and the Transition from Oil Dependency to a Green Economy in the United Arab Emirates

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🔬研究者:Provides an empirical case study on the macroeconomic effects of green transition policies in an oil-dependent economy, useful for comparative research.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the importance of complementary policies such as subsidy reform and capital investment to realize growth benefits from green transition.

The shift from oil-based growth to a greener economy has become one of the key policy agendas for the United Arab Emirates to balance long-term economic development with environmental sustainability. This study investigates the relationship between government expenditure and the transition from oil dependency to green economy in UAE for the period 2001-2021. The central research question is whether the government spending has a significant impact on the economic growth of the UAE, with subsidiary questions examining the roles of renewable energy consumption, oil rents, and inflation. This study is guided by four theoretical frameworks; Keynesian Fiscal Theory, Green Growth Theory, Resource Curse Theory and the Triple Bottom Line. A positivist, deductive, archival quantitative methodology is adopted using secondary annual data from World Bank Development Indicators. Three analytical stages are deployed: descriptive statistics characterizing variable trends; Pearson correlation analysis; and two OLS multiple regression models, Model 1 (primary: government expenditure and renewable energy) and Model 2 (control: oil rents and inflation). Model 1 (F(2,18)=2.966, p=0.077, adjusted R²=0.164, Durbin-Watson=1.734) reveals that neither government expenditure (B=−0.770, p=0.230) nor renewable energy (B=−2.312, p=0.648) reached statistical significance as predictors of UAE GDP growth. Model 2 (F(4,16)=1.659, p=0.208, adjusted R²=0.116) extended the specification to all four predictors simultaneously and similarly found that none reached significance, with lower explanatory power than Model 1. All four hypotheses (H1–H4) were rejected at the 5% threshold. Correlation analysis reveals that government expenditure is significantly negatively correlated with GDP growth (r=−0.489, p=0.025) and strongly positively correlated with renewable energy (r=0.747, p<0.001). The study concludes that the UAE's green economic transition is institutionally underway but has not yet generated a statistically detectable aggregate growth dividend within the 2001–2021 window. Policy recommendations emphasis accelerating clean energy deployment, reforming fossil fuel subsidies and shifting public spending to productive capital investment. References Al-Sarihi, A., & Mansouri, N. (2022). Renewable energy development in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries: Status, barriers, and policy options. Energies, 15(5), 1923. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15051923 Aljarallah, R. A., & Angus, A. (2020). Dilemma of natural resource abundance: A case study of Kuwait. SAGE Open, 10(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019899701 Alssadek, M., & Benhin, J. (2023). 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