on the robustness of robustness checks of the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis since its first inception in the debate on the relationship between environment and growth in 1992 the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis ekc hereafter has been subject of continuous and intense scrutiny the most recent line of investigation criticizes the ekc hypothesis on more fundamental grounds in that it stresses the lack of sufficient statistical testing of the empirical relationship and questions the very existence of the notion of ekc attention is in particular drawn on the stationarity properties of the series involved per capita emissions or concentrations and per capita gdp and in case of presence of unit roots on the cointegration property that must be present for the ekc to be a well defined concept only at that point can the researcher ask whether the long run relationship exhibits an inverted u pattern on the basis of panel integration and cointegration tests for sulfur stern 2004 and perman and stern 1999 2003 have presented evidence and forcefully stated that the ekc hypothesis does not exist in this paper we ask whether similar strong conclusions can be arrived at when carrying out tests of system fractional integration and cointegration as an example we use the controversial case of carbon dioxide emissions the results show that more ekcs come back into life relative to traditional integration cointegration tests however we confirm that the ekc hypothesis remains a fragile concept

the renewable energy growth and environmental kuznets curve in turkey an ardl approach abstract this study examines the potential of renewable energy sources in reducing the impact of ghg emissions in turkey using autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach the relationship between co 2 emissions electricity generated using renewables and gdp in turkey has been investigated during 1961 2010 moreover the validity of environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis has been tested model results show that the coefficient of electricity production from renewable sources hydro power excluded with respect to co 2 emissions is negative and significant in the long run although this effect is positive and statistically significant in the short run since the ecm term is 0 82 it becomes negative around 1 year this means that renewable electricity production will contribute to environmental enhancement with a one year lag our results also suggest a u shaped ekc relationship between per capita ghgs and income estimations from a long run regression show that although the peak point of gdp per capita has been calculated to be 9920 us dollars this turning point was outside of the observed sample period therefore ghg emissions start to decrease with an increase in per capita gdp in the following years model research implies the potential and the importance of renewable energy sources in controlling of emissions in turkey

the estimation of demand parameters in hedonic price models this paper shows that the econometric problem of estimating hedonic demand parameters is not a standard identification problem caused by demand supply interaction as has been often assumed estimation procedures based on this assumption lead to biased results the hedonic estimation problem is instead caused by the endogeneity of both prices and quantities when households face a nonlinear budget constraint an instrumental variables solution to this problem is suggested using instruments that exogenously shift the budget constraint

the relationship between energy demand and real gdp growth rate the role of price asymmetries and spatial externalities within 34 countries across the globe abstract the aim of this paper is to empirically explore the relationship between energy demand and real gross domestic product gdp growth and to investigate the role of regional externalities on per capita final energy consumption fec in 34 countries during the period from 2005 to 2013 the paper utilizes a dynamic panel generalized method of moments dpggm approach and spatial econometric techniques in order to analyse the effect of real gdp growth rate on fec through an error correction model ecm and to examine clustered patterns of energy consumption the results show that a the demand is elastic both in the industrial and the household services sectors b electricity and natural gas are demand substitutes c the relationship between real gdp growth rate and per capita energy consumption exhibits an inverted u shape for all the sample countries under scrutiny 34 countries eurozone and eu28 but not for all the employed sectors of the economy d price electricity and gas and gdp growth asymmetries are supported from the employed parametric tests and e distance does not affect per capita fec but economic neighbours have a strong positive effect

the income environment relationship evidence from a binary response model abstract the empirical environmental kuznets curve ekc literature is vast but far from conclusive many authors have analysed the existence of an ekc for various pollutants others have used the ekc framework to identify country characteristics that help to explain the income environment relationship in this framework environmental degradation is analysed using a second or third order polynomial in income and a limited number of control variables some authors question whether this standard framework is appropriate this paper proposes an alternative to study the specific characteristics of countries that have experienced economic growth and an improving environment at the same time we estimate a binary response model and find an ekc like relation between the probability that a country s environment improves with economic growth and per capita gdp our evidence further suggests that the level of environmental damage is an important explanatory variable we also confirm the importance of an open political system these results indicate that the binary response model could be a valuable alternative to test which country specific characteristics are associated with a negative ier

stoking the fires co2 emissions and economic growth abstract we examine the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions a greenhouse gas central to global warming predictions estimates derived from global panel data suggest a diminishing marginal propensity to emit mpe carbon dioxide as gdp per capita rises despite this global carbon dioxide emissions growth will continue at 1 8 percent per annum for the foreseeable future a result that is not sensitive to average output growth instead emissions growth continues because output and population will grow most rapidly in lower income nations with high mpes this latter feature emphasizes the distributional consequences of policies to reduce emissions

per capita carbon dioxide emissions convergence or divergence understanding and considering the distribution of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions is important in designing international climate change proposals and incentives for participation i evaluate historic international emissions distributions and forecast future distributions to assess whether per capita emissions have been converging or will converge i find evidence of convergence among 23 member countries of the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd whereas emissions appear to be diverging for an 88 country global sample over 1960 2000 forecasts based on a markov chain transition matrix provide little evidence of future emissions convergence and indicate that emissions may diverge in the near term i also review the shortcomings of environmental kuznets curve regressions and structural models in characterizing future emissions distributions

convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among industrialised countries revisited this paper examines the existence of stochastic and deterministic convergence of carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 23 countries over the period 1960 2002 for that purpose we conduct unit root testing by employing the recently developed panel stationarity test of carrion i silvestre et al carrion i silvestre j l del barrio castro t lopez bazo e 2005 breaking the panels an application to the gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 which assumes a highly flexible trend function by incorporating an unknown number of structural breaks we accommodate general forms of cross sectional dependence as well as control for finite sample bias through bootstrap methods overall our analysis provides strong evidence supporting both stochastic and deterministic convergence in co2 emissions thus confirming strazicich and list strazicich m c list j a 2003 are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries environmental and resource economics 24 263 271 and westerlund and basher westerlund j basher s a 2007 testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data environmental and resource economics forthcoming findings of convergence

convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the eu legend or reality abstract designing appropriate environmental and energy policies in order to meet the kyoto protocol s carbon dioxide co 2 reduction targets in the european union eu requires a detailed examination and thorough understanding of co 2 emission trends across the eu member states this paper investigates whether co 2 emissions have converged across 22 european countries over the 1971 to 2006 period the bayesian shrinkage estimation method is employed to do this work and the results reveal the following first the hypothesis of absolute convergence in per capita co 2 emissions is supported and a slight upward convergence is observed second the fact that countries differ considerably in both their speed of convergence and volatility in emissions makes it possible to identify different groups of countries third the results with respect to convergence do not vary much once the share of industry in gdp is accounted for in a conditional convergence analysis however a decreasing share of industry in gdp seems to contribute to a decline in per capita emissions these findings may carry important implications for both national and eu environmental policies

are there limits to growth a simple theoretical model of pollution is developed that generates an inverted u shape relationship between per capita income and environmental quality this model is then used to study long run growth the same inverted u shape is shown to appear in time series and the prospects for sustained growth are shown to hinge on whether increasingly strict environmental regulation is compatible with a constant rate of return on capital implementation is also studied tax and voucher schemes are shown to have an advantage over direct regulation because they provide the correct incentives for capital accumulation copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

divergence in state level per capita carbon dioxide emissions this paper addresses the question of whether income convergence is sufficient for per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions convergence by focusing on a set of advanced economies the u s states i undertake a variety of cross sectional and stochastic convergence tests with two novel measures of 1960 to 1999 state level co2 emissions per capita production pre electricity trade co2 and consumption post electricity trade co2 and with income per capita although incomes continue to converge i find stark divergence in production co2 per capita and no evidence of convergence for consumption co2 per capita forecasts of future distributions show little convergence in emissions

income and emission a panel data based cointegration analysis this paper presents the results of an investigation of the causality issue of incomeemission relationship based on time series econometric techniques of unit root test cointegration and related error correction model for a panel data set here the nature of causality between per capita co2 emission pcco2 and per capita gdp pcgdp has been examined using a cross country panel data set covering 88 countries for the period 1960 90 using the panel unit root test procedure of im et al 1997 ips we have found that the hypothesis of unit root i e non stationarity of the time series of pcgdp and pcco2 can not be rejected for individual country groups as both the variables are found to follow i 1 process we next have performed the panel data co integration test and finally we have estimated the ecm for these country groups for which significant income emission cointegration was obtained to explore the nature of dynamics implicit in the given panel data set our findings suggest that there is more or less a bi directional causal relationship between income pcgdp and co2 emission pcco2 for africa central america america as a whole eastern europe western europe europe as a whole and the world as a whole that means the movement of the one variable directly affects the other variable through a feedback system thus the policy makers should be cautious to make proper decision about the control of emission level

causal relationship between energy consumption and gdp growth revisited a dynamic panel data approach abstract this paper uses the panel data of energy consumption and gdp for 82 countries from 1972 to 2002 based on the income levels defined by the world bank the data are divided into four categories low income group lower middle income group upper middle income group and high income group we employ the gmm sys approach for the estimation of the panel var model in each of the four groups afterwards the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is tested and ascertained we discover a in the low income group there exists no causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth b in the middle income groups lower and upper middle income groups economic growth leads energy consumption positively c in the high income group countries economic growth leads energy consumption negatively after further in depth analysis of energy related data the results indicate that in the high income group there is a great environmental improvement as a result of more efficient energy use and reduction in the release of co2 however in the upper middle income group countries after the energy crisis the energy efficiency declines and the release of co2 rises since there is no evidence indicating that energy consumption leads economic growth in any of the four income groups a stronger energy conservation policy should be pursued in all countries

economic growth energy intensity and the energy mix abstract this paper explores how changes in energy intensity and the switch to renewables can boost economic growth to do so we implement a dynamic panel data approach on a sample of 134 countries over the period 1960 to 2010 we incorporate a set of control variables related to human and physical capital socio economic conditions policies and institutions which have been widely used in the literature on economic growth given the current state of technology improving energy intensity is growth enhancing at the worldwide level moreover conditional to energy intensity moving from fossil fuels to frontier renewables wind solar wave or geothermic is also positively correlated with growth our results are robust to the specification of the dynamic panel with respect to alternative approaches pooled ols within group or system gmm and to alternative specifications accounting for heterogeneity across countries a set of institutional factors and other technical aspects

renewable energy consumption co2 emissions and oil prices in the g7 countries abstract economic and societal issues related to energy security and global warming is placing greater emphasis on the consumption of renewable energy this paper presents and estimates an empirical model of renewable energy consumption for the g7 countries panel cointegration estimates show that in the long term increases in real gdp per capita and co2 per capita are found to be major drivers behind per capita renewable energy consumption these results are robust across two different panel cointegration estimators oil price increases have a smaller although negative impact on renewable energy consumption deviations from equilibrium are driven mostly by the error correction term as opposed to short term shocks short term deviations from the long term equilibrium take anywhere from between 1 3 years france and 7 3 years japan to correct

are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries time paths of carbon dioxide emissions intwenty one industrial countries are examinedfrom 1960 1997 to test for stochastic andconditional convergence both panel unit roottests and cross section regressions areperformed overall we find significantevidence that co2 emissions haveconverged

greenhouse gases emissions growth and the energy mix in europe the importance of energy on greenhouse gases ghg emissions is reflected by the fact that 65 of said emissions in the world are currently due to the use and production of energy however most empirical emission models are found within the environmental kuznetz curve ekc framework which focuses on the relationship between emissions and economic development ang s 2007 2008 papers are some of the exceptions that simultaneously study the relationship between emissions growth and energy with respect to ang s research we contribute on two important aspects first while ang uses a particular country as the study and use time series techniques we take advantage of a panel data set of 24 european countries between 1990 and 2006 and use a dynamic panel data dpd framework second the impact of energy consumption on emissions would depend on the primary energy mix and on the final use of this energy and we consider both factors in the model

managerial incentives and investment in r d in large multiproduct firms incentives for division managers in large firms affect their risk orientation and thus their decisions to invest in r d this paper reviews theory and hypothesizes that division managers incentive compensation that is based on financial performance is negatively related to risk taking as measured by r d intensity results of a study of 184 major u s firms suggest that incentives based on short term annual division financial performance are negatively related to total firm r d intensity after controlling for industry r d intensity firm diversification size and group structure furthermore the results suggest that an emphasis on long term financial incentives may mitigate the negative relationship between these incentives and r d intensity but does not promote risk taking the results suggest the importance of emphasizing strategic controls evaluating division managers based on operational understanding of strategies proposed strategic criteria as opposed to the use of financial controls evalua

energy consumption pollutant emissions and economic growth in south africa article i nfo article history this paper examines the long run and the causal relationship between economic growth pollutant emissions and energy consumption for south africa for the period 1965 2006 in a multivariate framework which includes labour and capital as additional variables using the bound test approach to cointegration we found a short run as well as a long run relationship among the variables with a positive and a statistically significant relationship between pollutant emissions and economic growth further applying a modified version of the granger causality test we also found a unidirectional causality running from pollutant emissions to economic growth from energy consumption to economic growth and from energy consumption to co2 emissions all without a feedback the econometric evidence suggests that south africa has to sacrifice economic growth or reduce its energy consumption per unit of output or both in order to reduce pollutant emissions in the long run however it is possible to meet the energy needs of the country and at the same time reduce co2 emissions by developing energy alternatives to coal the main source of co2 emissions however the econometric results upon which the policy suggestions are made should be interpreted with care as they may not be sufficiently robust enough to categorically warrant the choice of an unpalatable policy option by south africa

co2 emissions energy consumption and output in france abstract this paper examines the dynamic causal relationships between pollutant emissions energy consumption and output for france using cointegration and vector error correction modelling techniques we argue that these variables are strongly inter related and therefore their relationship must be examined using an integrated framework the results provide evidence for the existence of a fairly robust long run relationship between these variables for the period 1960 2000 the causality results support the argument that economic growth exerts a causal influence on growth of energy use and growth of pollution in the long run the results also point to a uni directional causality running from growth of energy use to output growth in the short run

testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data this paper tests the convergence in per capita carbon dioxide emissions for a collection of developed and developing countries using data spanning the period 1870 2002 for this purpose three recently developed panel unit root tests that permit for dependence among the individual countries are employed the results lend strong support in favor of convergence for the panel as a whole estimates of the speed of this convergence is also provided