Carbon Markets and Economic Signals : A Bibliometric Review of Global Research Trends and Emerging Themes

Abstract

This study examines the global research landscape of carbon markets in connection with broader economic signals, drawing on 75 Scopus-indexed publications retrieved through a structured bibliometric search. Using VOSviewer as the principal analytical tool, the study constructs keyword co-occurrence networks to identify dominant research themes, thematic clusters, the temporal evolution of scholarly attention, and the relative concentration of research effort across the field. The network visualization reveals four interconnected clusters spanning carbon price dynamics and forecasting, carbon trading and commerce, emissions trading and environmental economics, and the energy-policy nexus surrounding electricity and power markets. The overlay analysis indicates that themes related to machine learning, forecasting, and China-centred carbon trading represent the most recently active research frontier, while emissions trading, environmental economics, and carbon sequestration reflect a comparatively earlier, established stream of inquiry. Density mapping confirms that carbon, carbon markets, and commerce constitute the most intensively researched nodes, functioning as the intellectual core that links price-formation mechanisms with macro-financial and policy signals. Citation analysis further identifies the publications that have most shaped the field's understanding of how energy prices, geopolitical risk, and financial market dynamics transmit into carbon price behaviour. Collectively, these findings depict carbon markets as an economically embedded research domain in which price discovery, risk spillovers, and forecasting innovation are increasingly studied as interconnected economic signals rather than isolated environmental phenomena.