<p>Digital Maturity and the Decoupling of Carbon Emissions from Economic Growth: Panel Evidence from 93 Economies</p>

The proposition that digital infrastructure could reduce the historical linkage between economic growth and carbon emissions remains contested. This study assembles a balanced panel of 93 economies from 2005 to 2022 and tests whether national digital maturity, measured by a composite of internet penetration, fixed broadband, mobile subscriptions, and high-technology exports, attenuates the gross domestic product (GDP) elasticity of per capita carbon emissions. The analysis combines internationally harmonized carbon, energy, macroeconomic, and digital indicators. A Tapio decoupling diagnostic, two-way fixed effects panel regressions, a dynamic specification with a lagged dependent variable, and a Hansen-style threshold model are estimated. The interaction between log GDP per capita and the Digital Maturity Index is negative and statistically significant across specifications. At the lowest decile of digital maturity, the GDP elasticity is 0.295, declining to a statistically insignificant 0.054 at the highest decile. The largest estimated effect was observed in the lower-middle-income subgroup.