PurposeThe main purpose of this research is to examine the impact of institutional quality and sectoral employment on environmental degradation in developing countries. This paper also re-examined the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis and estimated the long run impact of explanatory variables on CO2 emissions.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the balanced panel data for the period 2002–2016 was used based on data availability and applied two-step SYS-GMM

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... tors.FindingsThe results showed that institutional quality such as government effectiveness (GE) and the rule of law (RL) reduce CO2 emissions and promote environmental quality in developing countries. Interestingly, the authors found new evidence that employment in agriculture and industry has a positive impact on pollution, while employment in the service sector was negatively associated with CO2 emissions, and the validity of the EKC hypothesis was confirmed. In addition, the research suggests that strong institutional frameworks and their effective implementation are the most important panacea and should be treated as a top priority to counteract environmental degradation and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.Originality/valueThis is the first study to examine the short run and long run effects of institutional quality and sectoral employment on environmental degradation using the balanced panel data for a large sample of developing countries. This paper also used a special technique of Driscoll and Kraay standard error approach to confirm the robustness results and showed the different roles of sectoral employment on environmental quality.