pollution and economic growth evidence from central and eastern european countries abstract we investigate the relationships between pollution and growth in eleven central and eastern european cee countries aggregate results robust to different estimators and control variables reveal an increasing nonlinear link between gdp and co2 for the group of cee countries however at a disaggregated country level the relationship between gdp and co2 is characterized by much diversity among cee countries namely n shaped inverted n u shaped inverted u monotonic or no statistical link thus despite an aggregated upward trend some cee countries managed to secure both higher gdp and lower co2 emissions from a policy perspective eu policymakers could pay more attention to these countries and amend the current unique environmental policy to account for country heterogeneities in order to support economic growth without damaging the environment

environmental kuznets curves new evidence on both panel and country level co2 emissions using data on per capita co2 emissions and per capita real gdp from fifteen countries spanning the period 1960 2013 this paper tests the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc using both panel based and time series based methodological approaches of cointegration given that the ekc hypothesis postulates an inverted u shaped relationship between emissions and output the study tests for cointegration between per capita co2 emissions per capita real gdp and the squared values of per capita real gdp the evidence from panel cointegration methodologies is mixed this result might arise due to time dependence of cointegrating coefficients the time varying cointegration approaches provide strong evidence in favor of time varying cointegration parameters furthermore based on the quantile cointegration approach the results indicate that the ekc hypothesis holds in 12 out of the 15 countries however even for these three countries the ekc hypothesis seems to hold at certain quantiles

the environmental kuznets curve in the oecd 1870 2014 carbon dioxide co2 emissions play an important role in global warming consequently studying the relationship between co2 emissions and economic development is important especially when viewed from a historical perspective we test the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for a panel of 20 oecd nations dating back to the first globalization boom in the nineteenth century utilising recently developed panel data estimators that account for cross sectional dependence and parameter heterogeneity for the period 1870 to 2014 we find support for the ekc hypothesis for the panel as a whole with three of our preferred four estimators with turning points in income per capita that lie between 18 955 and 89 540 in 1990 us country specific results however only provide mixed support for the ekc hypothesis specifically we find evidence of an ekc for nine of the 20 countries with five exhibiting a traditional inverted u shaped relationship three exhibiting an n shaped relationship and one an inverted n shaped relationship

carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth panel data evidence from developing countries in this paper we test the environment kuznet s curve ekc hypothesis for 43 developing countries we suggest examining the ekc hypothesis based on the short and long run income elasticities that is if the long run income elasticity is smaller than the short run income elasticity then it is evident that a country has reduced carbon dioxide emissions as its income has increased our empirical analysis based on individual countries suggests that jordan iraq kuwait yemen qatar the uae argentina mexico venezuela algeria kenya nigeria congo ghana and south africa approximately 35 per cent of the sample carbon dioxide emissions have fallen over the long run that is as these economies have grown emissions have fallen since the long run income elasticity is smaller than the short run elasticity we also examine the ekc hypothesis for panels of countries constructed on the basis of regional location using the panel cointegration and the panel long run estimation techniques we find that only for the middle eastern and south asian panels the income elasticity in the long run is smaller than the short run implying that carbon dioxide emission has fallen with a rise in income

consumer demand for green power and energy efficiency abstract this article examines reported willingness to pay for electric utility investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency resources using the results of deliberative polls conducted by electric utilities in texas 1 age education and salary tend to affect reported willingness to pay for utility investments in these resources intensive exposure to information about energy resource issues led to an increase in the number of respondents interested in paying a modest premium to support investments in both renewable energy resources and energy efficiency however average reported premiums actually declined following the polls as very high outlier responses moved to more reasonable values following the polls these results support the contention that informed dialogue about energy alternatives will result in broader interest in providing a modest level of support for these resources

estimating the environment kuznets curve hypothesis evidence from latin america and the caribbean countries this study explores the effect of economic growth gdp renewable energy consumption re and financial development fd on co2 emission co2 in latin america and caribbean countries to achieve this goal a panel co2 model was built over the period 1980 2010 the kao cointegration test results revealed that the variables are cointegrated the fully modified ols fmols results indicated an inverted u shape relationship between co2 and gdp thus confirming the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis furthermore fmols results also revealed that fd can improve environmental quality by its negative long run effect on co2 however re has no long run effect on co2 indicating that the re does not contribute to co2 reduction the vecm granger causality results revealed feedback causality between gdp re fd and co2 in both short and long run additionally granger causality results also revealed that re gdp and fd can be a good solution to reduce environmental damage since they have a causal effect on co2 this study shows the investigated countries should increase their banking loans on green energy energy efficiency and energy saving projects to reduce environmental damage in addition the above recommendation can increase the contribution of renewable energy in reducing environmental damage

using labels to investigate scope effects in stated preference methods insufficient sensitivity to scope variations in the scale of the environmental good on offer remains a major criticism of stated preference methods and many studies fail a scope test of some sort across a range of existing explanations for insensitivity to scope commodity mis specification embedding warm glows there seems to exist no clear conclusion on how to deal with the problem this paper provides an alternative explanation for insufficient sensitivity to scope based on re definition of the determinants of value for environmental goods within an attributes based choice model in the proposed framework respondents willingness to pay need depend not only on physical characteristics of a good but may also depend on the label under which the environmental good is sold in the hypothetical market to investigate this problem a choice experiment study of biodiversity was conducted we find that controlling for the effects of a label in this case national park designation leads to significant increase in the scope sensitivity of welfare measures

does corporate r d investment affect firm environmental performance evidence from g 6 countries the rate of climate change due to global warming has become a substantial concern and appeared as a real world phenomenon in the recent years however it is imperative to know how business enterprises alter such concern recent studies involve a variety of firm level factors to create a robust link between business enterprises environmental and financial performance however little is known regarding the role of research and development r d investment on firms environmental performance using a firm level data for the period 2004 2016 from g 6 countries this study empirically investigates how r d investment affects the firm environmental performance measured by energy and carbon emissions intensities we find that r d investment improves the firm s environmental performance consistent with the theoretical argument of natural resource based view nrbv our findings are robust to alternative econometric specifications alternative variable specifications and sub samples our findings offer novel insights to the policymakers business managers and regulators

do contingent valuation estimates pass a scope test a meta analysis abstract this paper considers the scope test proposed to judge the internal consistency of contingent valuation estimates the test is shown to be quite sensitive to the maintained hypotheses required to derive fairly precise expectations for the properties of wtp functions and therefore a different approach may be needed in gauging the reliability of cv this paper describes an approach that relies on a weight of the evidence criterion and uses meta analysis to develop a systematic appraisal of what the economic values of changes in amenity resources are the approach is illustrated for the case of estimating people s willingness to pay for improving or maintaining visibility at the national parks

characterizing the effects of valuation methodology in function based benefits transfer abstract meta analyses have demonstrated that willingness to pay wtp estimates vary systematically according to methodological factors the benefits transfer literature provides little guidance with regard to the treatment of such effects transfers are typically conducted by ignoring such effects using ad hoc adjustments or otherwise suppressing information regarding the sensitivity of wtp to methodological attributes this paper illustrates a means to characterize methodological effects within benefits transfer based on an application of the common bootstrap drawing from meta analysis the approach characterizes the sampling distribution of wtp with respect to patterns of methodological variation present in underlying studies results provide a means to characterize the extent of variation associated with predefined groups of methodological attributes providing transparent information on the sensitivity of wtp not typically available in benefits transfer

does globalization affect growth evidence from a new index of globalization the study develops an index of globalization covering its three main dimensions economic integration social integration and political integration using panel data for 123 countries in 1970 2000 it is analysed empirically whether the overall index of globalization as well as sub indexes constructed to measure the single dimensions affect economic growth as the results show globalization indeed promotes growth the dimensions most robustly related with growth refer to actual economic flows and restrictions in developed countries although less robustly information flows also promote growth whereas political integration has no effect

evidence on the validity of cross sectional and longitudinal labor market data this article investigates error properties of survey reports of labor market variables we use the panel study of income dynamics psid validation study a two wave panel survey of workers employed by a large firm that shared its detailed payroll records individuals reports of annual earnings are fairly accurate errors are negatively related to true earnings reducing bias due to measurement error when earnings are used as an independent variable biases are moderately larger for changes in earnings earnings per hour are less reliably reported than annual earnings biases in estimating earnings functions are relatively small but those in labor supply functions may be important

the co2 growth nexus revisited a nonparametric analysis for the g7 economies over nearly two centuries abstract using a long dataset and some recently popularized nonparametric econometric techniques this study revisits the nexus between economic growth and carbon dioxide co 2 emissions for the g7 countries over nearly two centuries the use of nonparametric modelling is warranted by the fact that long historical time series are often subject to structural breaks and other forms of nonlinearity over the course of time we employ nonparametric cointegration and causality tests along with the cross validated local linear regression analysis and validate the existence of the environmental kuznets curve in six of the g7 countries canada france germany italy u k and the u s and the only exception is japan our empirical analysis also finds co 2 emissions and economic growth to be cointegrated and closely interrelated in the granger sense our results are robust and highlight the nonlinear causal relationship between the two variables

racial differences in patterns of wealth accumulation making use of psid data for 1984 1989 and 1994 we examine race differences in patterns of asset accumulation our results indicate as expected that inheritances raise the rate of wealth accumulation of whites relative to that of african americans but while whites devote a greater share of their income to saving racial differences in saving rates are not significant once we control for income though our results may be period specific we also do not find evidence that the rate of return to capital is greater for whites than for african americans simulations suggest that african americans would have gained significant ground relative to whites during the period if they had inherited similar amounts saved at the same rate had comparable income levels and more speculatively had portfolios closer in composition to those of whites

diagnosing insensitivity to scope in contingent valuation sensitivity to scope is considered a desirable property of contingent valuation studies and often treated as a necessary condition for validity we first provide an overview of scope insensitivity explanations put forth in the environmental valuation literature then we analyze data from a contingent valuation survey eliciting willingness to pay to prevent oil spills of four different magnitudes in arctic norway in the baseline analysis the scope inference is ambiguous there is only statistical difference in willingness to pay to avoid a very large versus small oil spill nok 1869 and nok 1086 respectively however further explorations show that several confounding factors suggested in the literature influence the scope inference the scope sensitivity improves when we control for subjective probabilities of amenity provision exclude respondents based on the debriefing questions take into consideration the sample sizes and impose diminishing marginal utility overall the analysis supports an emerging view in the contingent valuation literature suggesting that statistical scope insensitivity is not a sufficient reason for deeming a study invalid

the environmental kuznets curve and sustainability a panel data analysis abstract in recent years sustainability has represented one of the most important policy goals explored in the environmental kuznets curve ekc literature but related hypotheses performance measures and results continue to present a challenge the present paper contributes to this ongoing literature by studying two different ekc specifications for 10 middle east and north african mena countries over the period 1990 2010 using panel data methods for the first specification namely ekc we show that there is an inverted u shape relationship between environmental degradation and income while for the second specification namely modified ekc mekc we show that there is an inverted u shape relationship between sustainability and human development hd the relationships are shaped by other factors such as energy trade manufacture added value and the role of law more interestingly findings from the estimation show that ekc hypothesis hd and sustainability are crucial to build effective environmental policies

tourism development energy consumption and environmental kuznets curve trivariate analysis in the panel of developed and developing countries abstract the study investigates the relationship between economic growth carbon dioxide emissions tourism development energy demand domestic investment and health expenditures with an aim to test the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis in the panel of three diversified world s region including east asia pacific european union and high income oecd and non oecd countries the study covers the period of last nine years i e 2005 2013 the study used the principal component analysis pca to construct tourism development index which is the amalgamation of number of tourists arrivals tourism receipts and international tourism expenditures the results validate the inverted u shaped relationship between carbon emissions and per capita income in the region the results further substantiate the following causal relationships i e i tourism induced carbon emissions ii energy induced emissions iii investment induced emissions iv growth led tourism v investment led tourism and vi health led tourism development in the region

retrospective reporting of household wealth evidence from the 1983 1989 survey of consumer finances one way to obtain panel like information on household wealth is to ask households about changes in their asset holdings yet the reliability of retrospective data is unclear considering the potential for recall error this article examines the reliability of retrospective reporting using data from the 1983 1989 survey of consumer finances we find substantial inconsistencies between reported net investments in assets with measured changes in holdings inconsistencies are less severe for salient transactions like home sales and more severe for aggregated items like financial assets

are there environmental kuznets curves for us state level co2 emissions abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis argues that the relationship between the pollutant and output is inverted u shaped implying that environmental degradation increases with output during the early stages of economic growth but declines with output after reaching a specified threshold for the first time in the literature on the ekc hypothesis this paper assesses the validity of the hypothesis across 48 us states using the common correlated effects cce estimation procedure by pesaran 2006 which allows us to obtain results in the presence of cointegration in the relationship between carbon emissions and a measure of output and its squared value which captures the inverted u shaped relationship postulated by the ekc hypothesis the panel data approach allows the study individual members of the panel also resulting in efficiency gains that would not be associated with time series approaches based on the small sample size of 51 observations 1960 2010 the findings postulate that the ekc hypothesis holds in only 10 states with the remaining 38 states should be reforming their environmental regulatory policies to prevent environmental degradation coming only at the expense of production and economic growth as for the other 10 states given that a threshold has been achieved higher growth would be accompanied with lower emissions and hence no additional environmental policies are required

greenhouse gas emissions energy consumption and economic growth a panel cointegration analysis from canadian industrial sector perspective abstract this paper investigates the long run and the causal relationship between greenhouse gas emissions energy consumption and economic growth for canadian industrial sectors over the period 1990 2007 the empirical findings suggest that in the long run equilibrium energy consumption has a positive and statistically significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions whereas a non linear relationship is found between greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth consistent with the environmental kuznets curve the short run dynamics conveys that there is a unidirectional granger causality running from energy consumption to greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth to greenhouse gas emissions and a weak unidirectional causality running from greenhouse gas emissions to energy consumption from economic growth to energy consumption in the long run however there seems to be a weak one way causality flowing from energy consumption and economic growth to greenhouse gas emissions

the environmental kuznets curve tipping points uncertainty and weak identification we consider an empirical estimation of the environmental kuznets curve ekc for carbon dioxide and sulphur with a focus on confidence set estimation of the tipping point various econometric parametric and nonparametric methods are considered reflecting the implications of persistence endogeneity the necessity of breaking down our panel regionally trends and temporal instability and the small number of countries within each panel in particular we propose a parametric inference method that corrects for potential weak identification of the tipping point weak identification may occur if the true ekc is linear while a quadratic income term is nevertheless imposed into the estimated equation relevant literature to date confirms that non linearity of the ekc is indeed not granted which provides the motivation for our work we also propose a non parametric counterpart to the parametric confidence set for sensitivity analysis viewed collectively our results confirm an inverted u shaped ekc in the oecd countries but generally not elsewhere although a local pollutant analysis suggests favorable exceptions beyond the oecd our measures of uncertainty confirm that it is difficult to identify economically plausible tipping points policy relevant estimates of the tipping point can nevertheless be recovered from a local pollutant long run or non parametric perspective

modeling the nexus between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth the effects of economic growth on the environment have received increased attention as global warming and other environmental problems become more serious many empirical studies explain the nexus between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth with such models as the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory however the assumptions of these models have never received strict verification with a large available data set and therefore may not be appropriate to describe the relationship in this study the nexus is modeled for 67 countries from 1971 to 2010 using a novel symbolic regression method from the experimental results several conclusions as follows could be reached firstly there is no universal model fitting every country and symbolic regression could discover a set of reasonable models for a specific country or region secondly four models including the inverted n shaped m shaped inverted u shaped and monotonically increasing are frequently found without domain experts intervention in these countries whereas the m shaped model has received little attention in previous studies but exhibits promising performance thirdly the relationship is diversified due to the difference of regions and economic development where developed countries generally follow the inverted n shaped and m shaped models to explain the relationship whereas developing countries are more likely to refer to the inverted n shaped inverted u shaped and monotonically increasing models finally several policy suggestions are presented

economic growth energy and environmental kuznets curve the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between income and carbon dioxide co2 emissions in the context of the environmental kuznets curve ekc which posits the existence of an inverted u shape relationship between environmental degradation and economic development for this purpose two empirical models are examined for both models the relationship between per capita income and per capita co2 emissions and the relationship among per capita income per capita energy use and per capita co2 emissions are analyzed respectively between 1980 and 2010 using the panel data estimation techniques with the application of driscoll kraay standard errors yet for the first model data are analyzed for 26 oecd countries with high income levels while for the second model data are examined for 52 emerging countries the results of both models show that n shape and an inverted n shape relationship for cubic functional form are observed thus the results do not support the ekc hypothesis which implies that environmental degradation cannot be solved automatically by economic growth

ownership of stocks and mutual funds a panel data analysis this paper analyzes the ownership dynamics of stocks and mutual funds using representative household panel data the dutch center savings survey 1993 1998 a bivariate dynamic binary choice model is introduced allowing for interactions between the two types of assets we find that unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence play a large role for both types of assets the positive relation between ownership of one type in one period and the other type in the next period is explained by correlated unobserved heterogeneity a negative state dependence effect of lagged ownership of stocks on ownership of mutual funds is found which can be explained by the costs of shifting funds across the two forms of stockholding