Size distribution of national CO₂ emissions

We examine the size distribution of national carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions on a sample of 210 countries and territories for the period 2000–2010. We employ lognormal, double Pareto-lognormal, lognormal-upper tail Pareto, and Pareto tails-lognormal distributions to estimate CO₂ size distribution. The analysis demonstrates that the lognormal-Pareto composite distributions generally fit the size distribution of CO₂ emissions better than the lognormal distribution. The parametric analysis reveals that the upper-tail of CO₂ emissions is characterized by Zipf's law. The power law in the upper-tail implies that large countries emit much of the CO₂. When controlling for population, Zipf's law no longer holds, but per capita CO₂ emissions still exhibit a strong Pareto upper tail.