Financial development,natural resources,and green technologies in the U.S.: A wavelet coherence and frequency-domain causality analysis

Abstract

The study examines the dynamic linkages among financial development, natural resources, green technologies, trade openness, and economic growth in the United States from the period of 1970 to 2021. Employing a multiscale frequency framework that integrates wavelet coherence and frequency-domain causality, the analysis captures both the directional and persistence of relationship across short-, medium-, and long-term horizons. The results show the financial development initially boosts natural resources use and growth but gradually transition toward supporting technological innovation and efficiency improvement. Green technologies exert a strong long run casual influence in decoupling growth from resource dependence, while trade openness displays limited and cyclical effects. This study makes the primary contribution first it extend time frequency research beyond emerging economies by focusing on advance market-based system, revealing how financial cycles interact with environmental transition, second it develops a unified multivariate framework to uncover conditional and directional dependencies, third it provides policy relevant linking to financial sector, technological sector and resource sustainability within the context of the United States carbon neutrality agenda and the inflation reduction act. The findings underscore that sustainable finance in advance countries requires aligning capital markets with innovation led low carbon transformation pathways.