intergenerational equity the capital environment trade off abstract this paper examines the trade off between capital accumulation and environmental quality that determines an intergenerationally equitable program according to the rawls maximin criterion this trade off is explored by an analysis of regular maximin programs in the framework developed by brock this results in a constant utility path supported by competitive prices with government imposed effluent charges and environmental rentals sufficient conditions for a regular maximin path to satisfy a hartwick rule in deciding on the combination of capital and environmental quality left to future generations are given

the role of property rights in determining the environmental quality income relationship article i nfo this paper examines the role of property rights in shaping the relationship between environmental quality and income it develops an analytical framework that integrates the effects of property rights evolution natural resource attributes agent characteristics and production technology on the environment income relationship the substantive strength of this framework lies in its ability to rationalize a wide range of environment income relationships the model shows that the u shaped environment income relationship which is consistent with the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis can arise only under specific model conditions thus the framework provides an additional explanation for non universality of ekc we provide evidence in support of our framework from case studies of various natural resources

a dynamic approach to the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis states that pollution levels increase as a country develops but begin to decrease as rising incomes pass beyond a turning point in ekc analyses the relationship between environmental degradation and income is usually expressed as a quadratic function with the turning point occurring at a maximum pollution level other explanatory variables have been included in these models but income regularly has had the most significant effect on indicators of environmental quality one variable consistently omitted in these relationships is the price of energy this paper analyzes previous models to illustrate the importance of prices in these models and then includes prices in an econometric ekc framework testing energy income and co2 income relationships these long run price income models find that income is no longer the most relevant indicator of environmental quality or energy demand indeed we find no significant evidence for the existence of an ekc within the range of current incomes for energy in the presence of price and trade variables

pollution abatement and balanced growth the analysis of endogenous growth models with pollution often concentrates on steady state trajectories under the assumption that the steady state is in some sense stable in the present note we provide examples showing that this issue should be dealt with carefully we use the rebelo ak model augmented with a stock of pollutants causing a negative externality it is found that optimal growth is not necessarily balanced contrary to the outcome of the standard rebelo model moreover the existence of the externality may affect long run optimal growth rates

technological vs ecological switch and the environmental kuznets curve we consider an optimal technology adoption ak model in line with boucekkine krawczyk and vallee 2011 an economy caring about consumption and pollution as well starts with a given technological regime and may decide to switch at any moment to a cleaner technology at a given permanent or transitory output cost at the same time we posit that there exists a pollution threshold above which the assimilation capacity of nature goes down featuring a kind of irreversible ecological regime we study how ecological irreversibility interacts with the ingredients of the latter optimal technological switch problem with a special attention to induced capital pollution relationship we find that if a single technological switch is optimal one recovers the environmental kuznets curve provided initial pollution is high enough if exceeding the ecological threshold is optimal then the latter configuration is far from being the rule

investigating environmental kuznets curve from an energy intensity perspective empirical evidence from china abstract this study pioneers investigating the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis and its possible regional differential characteristics in china based on 2003 2017 years of provincial panel data this research employs panel smooth transition auto regression pstr model to analyze the impact of income levels on environmental pollution and identify the ekc threshold of energy intensity then 30 chinese provinces were categorized by energy intensity to examine the inter provincial and interregional differences in the ekc threshold of energy intensity rather than the traditional threshold of income the results indicate that china s pollution emissions and energy intensities show a stepwise decreasing pattern from the western region to the eastern region in addition the impact of income levels on pollution emissions is non linear and the critical value of energy intensity is 0 9168 between the high and low regimes an inverted u shaped environmental kuznets curve is accepted for energy intensity with 0 7670 as its threshold value when the energy intensity is higher lower than the threshold value the income elasticity of pollution emission is positive negative the more developed provinces and municipalities mainly in the eastern region are proved to exceed the threshold than the provinces in the central and western regions within the sample period given these findings this study further divides china s provinces into eco friendly low pollution and high pollution provinces and accordingly the most important policy recommendations were discussed for policy makers and researchers this research can provide a new insight to investigate countries with unbalanced development levels within and a reference for environmental governance policies in sub regions

the role of trade openness and investment in examining the energy growth pollution nexus empirical evidence for china and india most of the existing literature dealing with the relationship between carbon emissions energy consumption and economic growth either suffers from ignoring relevant variables such as trade openness

co2 emissions energy consumption and economic growth in bric countries abstract this paper examines dynamic causal relationships between pollutant emissions energy consumption and output for a panel of bric countries over the period 1971 2005 except for russia 1990 2005 in long run equilibrium energy consumption has a positive and statistically significant impact on emissions while real output exhibits the inverted u shape pattern associated with the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis with the threshold income of 5 393 in logarithms in the short term changes in emissions are driven mostly by the error correction term and short term energy consumption shocks as opposed to short term output shocks for each country short term deviations from the long term equilibrium take from 0 770 years russia to 5 848 years brazil to correct the panel causality results indicate there are energy consumption emissions bidirectional strong causality and energy consumption output bidirectional long run causality along with unidirectional both strong and short run causalities from emissions and energy consumption respectively to output overall in order to reduce emissions and not to adversely affect economic growth increasing both energy supply investment and energy efficiency and stepping up energy conservation policies to reduce unnecessary wastage of energy can be initiated for energy dependent bric countries

interrelationships between income health and the environment extending the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract this paper examines the link between the health indicators and the environmental variables for a cross section of countries widely dispersed on the economic development spectrum while environment and income are seen to have an inverted u shaped relationship environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis it is also well established that environment and health are positively related our study focuses on the implications of this for the relationship between health and income in the early phases of income growth the gains in health and the losses in environmental quality could cancel each other out and this challenges the idea that as incomes increase health would always improve to empirically analyse these issues we estimate a two stage least squares model that focuses on the impact of income and the environment on health status with environment being an endogenous variable our results show that the environmental stress variable has a significant negative effect on health status at the same time gross national product gnp levels are shown to vary positively with health status variables we find that the health gains obtained through improved incomes can be negated to a significant extent if the indirect effect of income acting via the environment is ignored research findings in this regard would be a useful policy instrument towards maximising both the environmental and health gains that come with economic growth and development

optimal growth resource amenities and the preservation of natural environments this paper examines the conditions for which it is optimal to permanently preserve natural environments in which a productive natural resource is found the conditions are more restrictive than those previously indicated in the literature on the economics of natural environments increasing consumption and declining commodity prices are not sufficient to warrant permanent preservation the initial capital stock can be an important determinant of the optimal level of preservation in addition resource amenity values will increase the initial resource price and decrease the rate of growth of the resource price the natural world provides a variety of services to the human community natural resources are essential inputs in the production of goods and services in addition the natural world generates a variety of amenity services including the scientific recreational and aesthetic value of preserved natural environments krutilla 1967 krutilla and fisher 1975a this paper examines the impact of resource amenity values on the optimal growth of an economy which depends upon natural resource inputs for the production of goods and services in particular the paper examines the conditions under which it is optimal to permanently preserve some natural environments in which the productive resource is found the conditions which warrant permanent preservation are more restrictive than previously indicated by the literature on the economics of natural environments increasing consumption and declining commodity prices are not sufficient to warrant permanent preservation in addition the initial capital endowment can be an important determinant of the optimal level of preservation

environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck abstract recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages these studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators results imply that ekcs may exist for a number of cases however the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and or lifestyle changes significantly more consumption based measures such co2 emissions and municipal waste for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income by considering consumption and trade patterns the author re examines the concept of the ekc and proposes the use of alternative consumption based measures of environmental impact the author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption

is there an ekc between economic growth and smog pollution in china new evidence from semiparametric spatial autoregressive models abstract although china has achieved rapid economic growth it suffers from severe smog conditions determining how to promote cleaner production and environmental sustainability is of great significance in clarifying the relationship between income and pollutants within an extension of the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat framework the effects of economic growth on pm2 5 contamination are explicitly investigated based on a recent large sample of 249 chinese cities in 2015 from a nonlinear spatial perspective this study marks the first attempt at comprehensively exploring the nexus between the selected variables and pm2 5 emissions using semiparametric spatial autoregressive models which overcome the misspecification issues of conventional parametric models to avoid the limitations of a single method this study also applies different estimation techniques such as the spatial lag model slm the spatial autoregressive model with spatial autoregressive disturbances sarar two stage least squares regression 2slsr quantile regression qr and nonparametric regression npr the results reveal that pm2 5 pollutants show strong positive characteristics of spatial spillover the results also suggest that there is a significant inverted u shaped relationship between economic growth and pm2 5 concentrations which confirms the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis additionally the empirical findings highlight the influence that the population density industrialization urbanization and traffic development factors have on increasing pm2 5 emissions in contrast technological innovation and green coverage do not play important roles in reducing pm2 5 concentrations the distribution of pm2 5 concentrations displays apparent geographical features to provide an in depth understanding of these impacts marginal analysis is performed to distinguish the local and neighbouring effects of determinants on pm2 5 pollution

the impact of economic growth on co2 emissions in azerbaijan abstract this paper investigates the relationship between the economic growth and co2 emissions in azerbaijan a cointegration analysis is conducted over the period 1992 2013 for getting more robust results johansen ardlbt dols fmols and ccr methods are employed to explore cointegration and estimate long run coefficients we use cubic quadratic and linear specifications and conclude that the last one is an adequate representation for the impact of the economic growth on co2 emissions in azerbaijan the results from the different cointegration methods are consistent with each other and show that the economic growth has a positive and statistically significant impact on the emissions in the long run implying that the ekc hypothesis does not hold for azerbaijan the income elasticity of co2 emissions using different methods is found to be between 0 7 and 0 8 moreover we find that any short run imbalance can be adjusted towards the long run equilibrium path within less than one year the paper concludes that measures to increase energy efficiency carbon pricing instruments in production and international domestic trade activities and nationwide social awareness programs to instruct about the negative consequences of pollution can be considered as relevant environmental policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions

neoclassical growth the j curve for abatement and the inverted u curve for pollution abstract this paper reexamines the neoclassical environmental growth model of forster to gain insights into the dynamic relationships among pollution abatement effort and economic development whereas the model has heretofore been used to examine steady state levels of capital consumption and environmental quality it also provides a theoretical basis for recent empirical research on j curves for abatement effort and inverted u curves for pollution

a theoretical basis for the environmental kuznets curve abstract this paper attempts to explain the environmental kuznets curve ekc or inverted u shaped relationship between income and environmental degradation in the framework of endogenous growth model considering a closed economy one part of capital is used for commodity production which generates pollution that degrades existing environment and the remaining part is used for abating pollution i e upgrading environment sufficient abatement activity improves restores environmental quality a sufficient abatement activity associated with commodity production could only lead optimally towards steady state the ratio of allocation of capital between two sectors production and abatement is fixed along the optimal path but it varies along the non optimal path that exists in the off steady state in the economy allocation of capital for abatement activity varies over time thus a change from insufficient to sufficient allocation of capital i e investment for abatement activity is the basis for an inverted u shaped relationship between environmental quality and economic growth

economic growth pollution and renewable resources abstract this paper first analyzes a model of economic growth with stock pollution allowing smooth substitution between emissions and reproducible capital when emissions are optimally controlled the steady state consumption is lower than without pollution control but the optimal steady state equilibrium may not exist if the marginal productivity of capital is bounded the steady state is shown to be a local saddle point independent of the rate of discount if pollution is not controlled a competitive economy moves along a stable growth path toward a too heavily polluted steady state next a growth model in which pollution affects the growth of renewable resources is presented the conditions for the existence and saddle point property of the steady state are given and the consequences of nonoptimal externality taxes are discussed when renewable resources are included higher than optimal pollution may decrease steady state consumption contrary to the case where renewable resources are ignored

inward technology transfer and competitiveness the role of national innovation systems this paper examines the role of national innovation systems in the inward transfer of technology that has underpinned the transformation of japan and other east asian economies since 1945 the economies that have benefited most from inward technology transfer have national innovation systems that have strengthened their national absorptive capacity this capacity relies primarily on investments in scientific and technical training and on economic policies that enforce competition among domestic firms the particular channels for inward technology transfer the identity of any strategic industries targeted for public intervention and the overall level of a nation s trade restrictions are ail of secondary importance a central theme of global economic change during the postwar period has been the application in less developed countries of technologies developed within economically advanced regions this phenomenon underpinned the post 1945 transformation of japan and other east asian economies and influenced the reconstruction of western european economies after world war ii the application of externally developed technologies within latecomer economies is hardly unique to the postwar period however samuel slater s introduction of british textile manufacturing is but one example of inward technology transfer in the nineteenth century us economy and david 1992 traces the origins of patent monopolies to efforts by medieval european city states and nations to attract experts in industrial arts to practice their craft within these jurisdictions both international technology flows and government efforts to influence them for national competitive advantage thus have ample historical precedent several characteristics nevertheless distinguish the post 1945 era from earlier historical periods the influence of international technology transfer on national economic development has increased as the postwar development of such economies as taiwan and south korea has relied much less on natural resource endowments than nineteenth

environmental degradation in developing countries households and the reverse environmental kuznets curve abstract we propose an alternative explanation for the inverted u shape relationship between income and environmental degradation in developing countries production and consumption patterns of rural households are the main cause of environmental damage with a conventional household model we demonstrate that the so called environmental kuznets curve may arise when the restrictive assumption of a set of perfect markets for factors and commodities is relaxed depending on the criterion or indicator that is used to represent environmental pressure however we demonstrate that the reverse may also hold this finding highlights the importance of selecting the appropriate dependent variable in regression analyses

energy innovations ghg emissions nexus fresh empirical evidence from oecd countries abstract this study explores the impact of improvements in energy research development erd on greenhouse gas ghg emissions using environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for 28 oecd countries over the period of 1990 2014 in doing so we have employed a panel data where public budget in energy research development and demonstration erd d has transformed into a finite inverted v lag distribution model developed by de leeuw 1962 this model considers that energy innovation accumulates in time and presents empirical evidence how energy innovation contributes in reducing energy intensity and environmental pollution as well our results indicate that energy innovation measures require lapses of time to reach their full effect i e innovation applied to measures for environmental correction does not reach its whole effect immediately requiring instead a certain amount of time to pass innovation policies have recommended for improving environmental quality

economic growth sectoral structures and environmental methane footprints we analyze the impacts of economic growth on methane emissions per capita at the sectoral level for the period 1997 2014 we cover three stages of the supply chain distinguishing between emissions

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

carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth an assessment based on production and consumption emission inventories working with a new dataset on comparable global co2 production and consumption inventories spanning the 1997 2011 period we investigate the relationship between real gross domestic product gdp per capita and co2 emissions per capita associated with both production and consumption activities by including linkages between production based emissions in one country and final consumption in another via cross border value chains we focus on the entire carbon chain we estimate polynomial and threshold models accounting for reverse causality and identification problems we find that the income elasticity for both inventories is regime dependent and reflects small carbon efficiency gains from economic development carbon footprints show larger income elasticities while national policy instruments targeting production can clearly be circumvented by carbon embodied in intermediate trade this implies problems of environmental sustainability that may require consumption based policy instruments

economic models for the environmental kuznets curve a survey abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc refers to an inverted u shaped relationship between some pollutant level and per capita income i e the environmental quality deteriorates at early stages of economic growth and subsequently improves at a later stage since the early 1990s a considerable number of empirical studies have been conducted on the ekc and although there is no conclusive proof it has been recognized that the ekc emerges as an empirical regularity however some recent studies cast doubt on the concept and methodology of empirical results and evidence of the existence of the ekc has been questioned in fact how economic growth affects the environmental quality i e the shape of the ekc is still controversial in order to identify the actual relationship between the environmental quality and economic growth it is essential to develop economic models from various points of view this paper overviews the current stage of theoretical models that explain such relationship

economic growth trade and energy implications for the environmental kuznets curve abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis asserts that pollution follows an inverted u path with respect to economic growth the ekc has been explained in terms of structural changes in the composition of economic output and increased environmental regulation at higher income levels while some authors have incorporated the impact of trade policy orientation on the ekc the impact of the actual movement between countries of goods that embody pollution has not been considered this paper attempts to econometrically quantify the effect using pooled cross country and time series data the ekc hypothesis is examined with respect to commercial energy consumption the source of many serious environmental problems it was found that while both industrializing and industrialized countries have added to their energy requirements by exporting manufactured goods the growth has been substantially higher in the former at the same time industrialized countries have been able to reduce their energy requirements by importing manufactured goods exports of manufactured goods by industrialized countries has thus been an important factor in generating the upward sloping portion of the ekc and imports by industrialized countries have contributed to the downward slope

technical progress structural change and the environmental kuznets curve abstract the paper shows that under reasonable assumptions about technical progress a positive sustainable growth rate fails to exist the argument is that a growing part of income has to be spent for continuing technical progress in order to compensate the pollution effects of growth hence in the long run either the sustainability condition will be violated or the growth rate must decline to zero furthermore in finite time the level of wealth will decrease despite growing income and a constant pollution level thus further growth is no longer reasonable similar arguments also hold for the environmental effects of structural change favoring less pollution intensive economic activities an evolutionary change of goods and production technology may shift the limits of growth and is hence a prerequisite for a long run ekc

transitional dynamics in two sector models of endogenous growth the steady state and transitional dynamics of two sector models of endogenous growth are analyzed in this paper we describe necessary conditions for endogenous growth the conditions allow us to reduce the dynamics of the solution to a system with one state like and two control like variables we analyze the determinants of the long run growth rate we use the time elimination method to analyze the transitional dynamics of the models we find that there are transitions in real time if the point in time production possibility frontier is strictly concave which occurs for example if the two production functions are different or if there are decreasing point in time returns in any of the sectors we also show that if the models have a transition in real time the models are globally saddle path stable we find that the wealth or consumption smoothing effect tends to dominate the substitution or real wage effect so that the transition from relatively low levels of physical capital is carried over through high work effort rather than high savings we develop some empirical implications we show that the models predict conditional convergence in that in a cross section the growth rate is predicted to be negatively related to initial income but only after some measure of human capital is held constant thus the models are consistent with existing empirical cross country evidence authors

economic growth international trade and air pollution a decomposition analysis abstract this study analyzes the impact of economic growth and international trade on the level of air pollution this is done by the estimation of the structural equation model with two factors describing the structure of economic activity and air pollution intensity it is further assumed that there is causal link between these two factors and that they are influenced by per capita income international trade intensity and the freedom house index the estimation results suggest that in the developing countries analyzed both international trade and per capita income lead to changes in the structure of economic activity and as a consequence to the increase in air pollution in addition the estimation results suggest that the impact of economic growth on air pollution intensity varies between the developing and developed countries in the developing countries this impact occurs through the change of the structure of economic activity while in the developed countries this impact is mainly direct and occurs through the sum of the scale effect and income effect the positive sign of this impact suggests the dominance of the scale effect over the income effect

information access income distribution and the environmental kuznets curve abstract recent empirical studies have tested the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc focusing primarily on the relationship between per capita income and certain types of pollutant emissions given the stock nature of many pollution problems emissions only partially account for the environmental impacts moreover almost all of the studies have given consideration to little more than income levels as explanatory variables this paper empirically tests the hypothesis of the ekc existence for a stock sensitive indicator that is the percentage of protected area pa within national territory it does theorize that economic growth is a necessary condition in order to better address environmental issues but it also stresses that other variables income distribution education information accessibility may play a fundamental role in determining environmental quality contrary to other studies that mainly focus on the calculation of the income level corresponding to the transition point this paper is more concerned with the calculation of environmental quality corresponding to that transition point that is the minimum level of environmental quality that a country is willing to accept this paper highlights the idea that if the transition point is determined primarily by income level social policies determine the level of environmental quality corresponding to that point

the taylor principle and monetary policy approaching a zero bound on nominal rates quantile regression results for the united states and japan this paper offers a new approach that estimates the response of interest rates to inflation and the output gap at various points quantiles on the conditional distribution of interest rates this offers an improvement on empirical estimates conducted only at the mean and also allows us to test the propositions that policy shows greater aggression to inflation in the reaction function in terms of a greater response coefficient as interest rates reach low levels and increasing aggression as the lower bound is approached we find support for the taylor principle a more aggressive response to inflation than under a taylor rule but no detectable evidence of increasing aggression as the zero lower bound is approached in the us and japan

globalisation and sustainability environmental kuznets curve and the wto abstract economic globalisation is seen by many as a driving force for global economic growth yet opinion is divided about the benefits of this process as highlighted by the wto meeting in seattle in late 1999 proponents of economic globalisation view it as a positive force for environmental improvement and as a major factor increasing the likelihood of sustainable development through its likely boost to global investment these proponents mostly appeal to analysis based on the environmental kuznets curve ekc to support their views about environmental improvement but ekc analysis has significant deficiencies furthermore it is impossible to be confident that the process of economic globalisation will result in sustainable development if weak conditions only are satisfied strong conditions probably need to be satisfied to achieve sustainable development and given current global institutional arrangements these are likely to be violated by the economic globalisation process global political action seems to be needed to avert a deterioration in the global environment and to prevent unsustainability of development this exposition demonstrates the limitations of ekc analysis identifies positive and negative effects of economic globalisation on pollution levels and highlights connections between globalisation and the debate about whether strong or weak conditions are required for sustainable development the article concludes with a short discussion of the position of wto in relation to trade and the environment and the seemingly de facto endorsement of wto of weak conditions for sustainable development it suggests that wto s relative neglect of environmental concerns is no longer politically tenable and needs to be reassessed in the light of recent developments in economic analysis the skew of economic growth e g in favour of developing countries is shown to be extremely important from a global environmental perspective

internal migration and the environmental kuznets curve for us hazardous waste sites abstract in the recent special issue of ecological economics devoted to the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis rothman speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption rothman d 1998 environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck a case for consumption based approaches ecol econ 25 178 consistent with rothman s general hypothesis of distancing as a possible source of ekc results this empirical study advances and tests a line of argument in which internal migration plays a central explanatory role for an observed ekc for us hazardous waste sites two specific hypotheses tested are i proximity to hazardous waste site build up emerges as a factor in the migration decisions of individuals as per capita income increases beyond a threshold level and ii the level of income at which the ekc turns downwards is equal to the threshold level of income in i results provide evidence that migration is a contributing factor to the observed ekc

end of pipe or cleaner production how to go green in presence of income inequality and pro environmental behavior in this paper we consider a vertically differentiated duopoly model in which a green producer competes with a brown rival in a market in which consumers are environmentally concerned in particular consumers are assumed to value not only the intrinsic quality of a certain product but also its environmental impact this environmental valuation has a positional content consumers attach a positive attribute to the green product while penalizing the brown one in this context we consider the choice of the green firm between cleaner and end of pipe abatement efforts we find that the interplay between the intensity of market competition consumers income disparity and environmental concern can play a crucial role in directing the green producer towards one or the other technological choice more precisely the adoption of cleaner production technologies can be discouraged by low average income and by tough competition while it can be spurred by the moral social incentive towards pro environmental behavior

air quality and economic growth an empirical study abstract in the present empirical study we have observed an inverse and sometimes u shaped relationship between environmental degradation and per capita real income as opposed to the inverted u shaped environmental kuznets curve ekc found in many earlier studies it was felt that a possible explanation of the observed pattern of relationship might be sought in the dynamics of the process of economic growth experienced by the countries concerned thus e g economic development may strengthen the market mechanism as a result of which the economy may gradually shift from non market to marketed energy resources that are less polluting this phenomenon may show up in the form of an inverse relationship as mentioned above also due to the global technical progress the production techniques available to the countries all over the world are becoming more and more capital intensive and at the same time less polluting this may mean that given the income level the pollution level decreases as the capital intensity of an economy rises in the present study it is indeed observed that as capital intensity increases the level of suspended particulate matter spm in the atmosphere decreases per capita real income is also found to be inversely related to spm partially but the interaction effect of per capita income and capital intensity on spm is observed to be positive this suggests that given the level of per capita income capital intensity a more capital intensive production technique a higher per capita income level would cause less pollution for spm a surprising result is also obtained i e a u turn is observed at a very high level of per capita real income i e us 12 500 at 1985 us prices this is possibly indicative of the fact that there are technological limits to industrial pollution control such that beyond a threshold level of income further rise in income cannot be achieved without environmental degradation

an overlapping generations model of growth and the environment this article analyzes the potential conflict between economic growth and the maintenance of environmental quality in an overlapping generations model short lived individuals make decisions which have long lasting effects on both factor productivity and the environment the model provides a theoretical explanation of observed correlations between environmental quality and income whereby economic growth is associated first with declines then improvements in environmental quality it suggests circumstances in which multiple pareto ranked steady state equilibria may arise and in which sustained growth of both capital and environmental quality may occur overmaintenance of the environment analogous to dynamically inefficient overaccumulation of capital may emerge copyright 1994 by royal economic society

is environmental degradation an inevitable consequence of economic growth tunneling through the environmental kuznets curve abstract economywide reforms often contribute simultaneously to economic social and environmental gains however unintended adverse side effects occur in many cases when such growth inducing reforms are undertaken while neglecting other policy market or institutional imperfections the remedy does not generally require reversal of the original economywide reforms but rather the ex ante implementation of additional complementary measures that remove such imperfections the ekc approach seeks to relate the state of the environment to the stage of development developing countries could learn from the experiences of industrialized nations and restructure growth and development to tunnel through any potential ekc thereby avoiding going through the same stages of growth that involve relatively high and even irreversible levels of environmental harm an environmentally adjusted measure of national income could significantly change the shape of the development environment relationship recommendations for decision making include actively seeking win win policies that simultaneously yield both economic and environmental gains pre empting environmental harm through ex ante remedial measures and fine tuning reform policies to avoid severe environmental damage the adoption of more sustainable policies will facilitate the attainment of higher levels of development at a lower environmental cost

pollution control under uncertainty and sustainability concern we analyze the implications of environmental policy on pollution in a stochastic framework with finite horizon and sustainability concern the social planner seeks to minimize the social environmental and economic costs associated with pollution we allow for the planner to attach different relative weights to the discounted and end of planning horizon costs in order to assess how sustainability concern might affect the optimal level of policy intervention we show that the optimal environmental policy increases with the degree of sustainability concern reducing thus the amount of pollution the society is forced to bear a calibration based on world textit co 2 data supports our conclusions further highlighting the importance of higher degrees of sustainability concern to achieve greener long run outcomes it also allows us to show that under a realistic model s parametrization the optimal environmental policy tends to rise with higher degrees of uncertainty in a precautionary manner

regional industrial dynamics under the environmental pressures in china abstract this study investigates how air pollution affects industrial path creation and industrial dynamics in china moving beyond existing literature that pays more attention to environmental effects of industrial development this paper focuses on how industrial development path changes due to environmental pollution using the data from chinese customs trade statistics ccts which covers the export trade data of prefecture level cities in china during 2002 2006 and 2012 to 2016 this paper probes into the effect of air pollution on industrial dynamics econometric model and instrumental variable iv regression are used in empirical analysis given the potential endogeneity issue results suggest that the interaction term between air pollution and density is negatively related to new industries entry it means that air pollution can reduce the effect of relatedness on industrial diversification and lead to path breaking further a channel for how air pollution affects industrial dynamics is examined in order to respond to air pollution local government conducts environmental regulation to lower the negative influence of air pollution which can lead to path breaking during industrial diversification process finally this paper seeks to bridge two strands of literature environmental economic geography and evolutionary economic geography