Today, carbon dioxide emission is one of the concerns of all countries in the world, so in this paper, we examine the effect of export quality, energy efficiency, and economic complexity on CO2 emissions per capita from 1990 to 2014 in emerging economies. For this purpose, first, energy efficiency is calculated using mathematical programming methods (DEA). Then, the effect of export quality, energy efficiency, and economic complexity on per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the panel of emerging economies is investigated using panel quantile regression. The analysis of energy efficiency reveals a steady improvement in the average efficiency of the countries studied from 1990 to 2014. Among these nations, China recorded the lowest efficiency score. Additionally, the results from the quantile regression suggest that export quality and per capita fossil fuel consumption significantly contribute to increases in CO2 emissions per capita across all levels of the data distribution. The results also show that the coefficient increases by moving in the level of quantiles, so that the highest effect coefficient of export quality on carbon dioxide emission is related to the quantile 90th and about .874. Energy efficiency has a negative and significant effect in all quantiles except the 90th, and the highest coefficient of influence (0.133) is related to quantile 10th. The increase in economic complexity increases the CO2 emissions in all quantiles except the 10th, and the highest coefficient (about 0.487) is related to the quantile 90th. The trade openness index has a negative and statistically significant effect on CO2 emissions per capita. Urbanization has different effects on carbon dioxide emissions in different quantiles. The empirical implications of this study help to guide the sustainable development policies of emerging economies.

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