the environmental kuznets curve environmental protection policy and income distribution abstract the effect of economic growth on pollution emissions differs substantially among high income countries i address this issue by analyzing public environmental policy decisions individual heterogeneity relative income effect and the political framework in which policy decisions are taken determine the emergence of the downward sloping segment of the environmental kuznets curve ekc income inequality produces a gap between the country s ability to pay for environmental protection and a country s willingness to pay i test this result by using oecd data on public r d expenditure for environmental protection the conclusion is that contrary to the ek hypothesis moments of the income distribution function other than the mean may be important for the emergence of a virtuous path of sustainable growth in high income countries

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

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

political and economic inequality and the environment abstract this paper analyzes and tests the hypothesis that political and economic equality result in lower levels of environmental degradation based on formal statements of the argument put forward by boyce r 1994 ecological economics 11 169 178 i show that equality may or may not be necessary to minimize degradation under some plausible conditions greater inequality may even be conducive to lower degradation actual results depend primarily on the intersection between the distribution of preferences across groups and the institutional rules two cross national empirical tests tend to support the contention that distributional issues do not systematically explain variations in environmental quality the results reinforce the conclusion that assumptions about the structure of preferences and workings of social choice institutions ignore complex interactions which influence the relationship between degradation and equality

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

loss allocation in energy transmission networks abstract in this paper we study a cost allocation problem that is inherent to most energy networks the allocation of losses in particular we study how to allocate gas losses between haulers in gas transmission networks we discuss four allocation rules two of them have already been in place in real networks and two others that are defined for the first time in this paper we then present a comparative analysis of the different rules by studying their behavior with respect to a set of principles set forth by the european union this analysis also includes axiomatic characterizations of two of the rules finally as an illustration we apply them to the spanish gas transmission network

anticipated development assistance temporary relief aid and consumption behaviour of low income countries much debate about the effectiveness of foreign aid to developing countries focuses on the assumption that aid flows mainly enhance current consumption rather than being channelled into investment this paper seeks to establish what proportion of foreign assistance is used to finance current consumption the principal hypothesis to be tested is that aid transfers include very heterogeneous components with different marginal propensity to raise consumption estimating the average marginal propensity to consume of all the components of aid as is commonly done may lead to erroneous results the flow of foreign aid from high to low income countries can be classified into two types the first includes income transfers of a relief nature such as emergency and distress relief including drought related food transfers medical and refugee relief and balance of payments crisis support these transfers are generally a temporary response to unanticipated events or shocks to the economy they can be perceived as an attempt by the donor community to help finance what is denoted in the permanent income theory as transitory consumption friedman i957 in addition they can be viewed as an attempt to maintain a subsistence level of consumption by absorbing the shocks to income entirely by changes in savings the low level of savings however and the constraints on foreign borrowing lead to dependency on foreign transfers and prevent domestic savings from being the residual that is almost all of

aid and resource mobilisation in sub saharan africa the role of reverse flows abstract this article seeks to ascertain the role of reverse flows in explaining the observed limited impact of aid on resource mobilisation in sub saharan africa it departs from the previous empirical literature on aid and resource mobilisation by abandoning the pervasive but untenable assumption that aid either displaces domestic saving increases consumption or increases investment some aid is in fact used to finance reverse flows debt servicing capital flight and reserve accumulation the evidence suggests that for the period covering 1980 to 2006 nearly 50 per cent of aid to sub saharan african countries was used to finance reverse flows

aid and growth in sub saharan africa the recent experience abstract this paper presents some quantitative evidence on the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth in the low income countries of sub saharan africa two key findings are presented first aid is positively and significantly correlated with investment and economic growth in africa second fix capital formation contributed to the rate of growth this result which emerges from analyzing time series data is somewhat surprising given the disappointing performance of african countries since the early 1970s

a game theoretical approach to sharing penalties and rewards in projects this paper analyzes situations in which a project consisting of several activities is not realized according to plan if the project is expedited a reward arises analogously a penalty arises if the project is delayed this paper considers the case of arbitrary nondecreasing reward and penalty functions on the total expedition and delay respectively attention is focused on how to divide the total reward penalty among the activities the core of a corresponding cooperative project game determines a set of stable allocations of the total reward penalty in the definition of project games surplus cost sharing mechanisms are used to take into account the specific characteristics of the reward penalty function at hand it turns out that project games are related to bankruptcy and taxation games this relation allows us to establish nonemptiness of the core of project games

economic growth and emissions reconsidering the empirical basis of environmental kuznets curves abstract recent empirical research indicates that certain types of emissions follow an inverted u or environmental kuznets curve ekc as income grows this regularity has been interpreted as a possible de linking of economic growth and patterns of certain pollutants for developed economies in this paper the empirical basis of this result is investigated by considering some statistical particularities of the various ekc studies performed it is argued that the inverted u relationship between income and emissions estimated from panel data need not hold for specific individual countries over time based on insights from intensity of use analysis in resource economics an alternative growth model is specified and estimated for three types of emissions co2 nox and so2 in four countries netherlands uk usa and western germany it is found that the time patterns of these emissions correlate positively with economic growth and that emission reductions may have been achieved as a result of structural and technological changes in the economy sustainable growth is defined as the rate of economic growth that does not lead to growth in emissions its rate is calculated for each type of emission and country based on estimated parameter values the resulting indicators reflect a balance between the positive influence of growth and negative influence of structural change and technological progress on emission levels

the impact of aid and public investment volatility on economic growth in sub saharan africa summary this study investigates the effects of aid inflows and the volatility of public investment on economic growth in 26 sub saharan african countries over the period from 1992 to 2011 three volatility variables comprising aid government revenue and public investment are incorporated into an aid growth model to test for their effect on economic growth using the generalized method of moments gmm technique and averaged data for five four year sub periods we show that although foreign aid has a positive impact on growth once potential endogeneity has been accounted for aid effectiveness may have been eroded by volatility in public investment

the determinants of atmospheric so2 concentrations reconsidering the environmental kuznets curve this analysis explores the effects of income and the spatial intensity of economic activity on the atmospheric concentration of sulfur dioxide the results indicate that there is a u shaped relation between income and atmospheric concentration of so2 and an inverted u shaped relation between the spatial intensity of economic activity and so2 concentrations these results suggest that the spatial intensity of economic activity rather than income provides the impetus for policies and technologies that reduce so2 emissions based on this result the atmospheric concentration of so2 in developing nations may decline faster than indicated by previous analyses the potential for this decline depends on the rate at which income grows relative to population the trade off between the effects of income gains and the spatial intensity of economic activity on the atmospheric concentration of so2 is consistent with the notion that some environmental problems can be ameliorated by slowing population growth and increasing income levels

impacts of official development assistance on agricultural growth savings and agricultural imports abstract this paper explores the links between development assistance agricultural output growth and imports in 56 developing economies over the period 1974 1990 the empirical model treats agricultural growth and imports savings and aid as endogenous the analysis also accounts for differences in macroeconomic policies the results show that aid had a positive impact on agricultural growth a robust relationship exits between aid and agricultural imports consistent with the argument that aid helps industrialized countries through market expansion and strengthened trade ties

ordinal cost sharing abstract we ask how the best known mechanisms for solving cost sharing problems with homogeneous cost functions the value proportional and serial mechanisms should be extended to arbitrary problems we propose the ordinality axiom which requires that cost shares should be invariant under essentially all increasing transformations of the measuring scales following thevalueapproach first we present an axiomatization of the shapley shubik rule based on ordinality next we define and axiomatize two extensions of theserialmechanism which contrary to the friedman moulin rule are ordinal finally we note that the aumann shapley extension of theproportionalmechanism is not ordinal we propose and defend an alternative proportional extension which does satisfy ordinality journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d63 c71

transmission loss allocation a comparison of different practical algorithms a pool operated electricity market based on hourly auctions usually neglects network constraints and network losses while applying its market clearing mechanism this mechanism determines the accepted and nonaccepted energy bids as well as the hourly market clearing prices as a result ex post procedures are needed to resolve network congestions and to allocate transmission losses to generators and demands this paper focuses on transmission loss allocation procedures and provides a detailed comparison of four alternative algorithms 1 pro rata pr 2 marginal allocation 3 unsubsidized marginal allocation and 4 proportional sharing a case study based on the ieee rts is provided different load scenarios covering a whole year are analyzed finally conclusions and recommendations are stated

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

wealthier is healthier we estimate the effect of income on health using cross country timeseries data on health infant and child mortality and life expectancy and income per capita we use instrumental variables estimates using exogenous determinants of income growth to identify the pure income effect on health isolated from reverse causation or incidental association the long run income elasticity of infant and child mortality in developing countries lies between 0 2 and 0 4 using these estimates we calculate that over a half a million child deaths in the developing world in 1990 alone can be attributed to the poor economic performance in the 1980s

aid policies and growth the authors of this paper use a new database on foreign aid to examine the relationships among foreign aid economic policies and growth of per capita gdp in panel growth regressions for 56 developing countries and 6 four year periods 1970 93 they find that the policies that have a great effect on growth are those related to fiscal surplus inflation and trade openness they construct an index for those three policies and have that index interact with foreign aid they have instruments for both aid and aid interacting with policies they find that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal monetary and trade policies in the presence of poor policies aid has no positive effect on growth this result is robust in a variety of specifications which include or exclude middle income countries include or exclude outliers and treat policies as exogenous or endogenous they examine the determinants of policy and find no evidence that aid has systematically affected policies either for good or for ill they estimate an aid allocation equation and show that any tendency for aid to reward good policies has been overwhelmed by donors pursuit of their own strategic interests in a counterfactual they reallocate aid reduce the role of donor interests and increasing the importance of policy such a reallocation would have a large positive effect on developing countries growth rates

domestic saving and international capital movements in the long run and the short run the evidence and analysis in this paper support the earlier findings of feldstein and horioka 1980 that sustained increases in domestic savings rates induce approximately equal increases in domestic rates of investment new estimates for the post opec period 1974 79 imply that each extra dollar of domestic saving increases domestic investment by approximately 85 cents in a sample of 17 oecd countries an explicit analysis of the problems of identification and simultaneous equations bias suggests that the regression estimates are more relevant as a guide to the long run response of international capital flows than to their short run behavior coefficient estimates based on annual variations in savings and investment are subject to potentially severe simultaneous equations bias that is not present when annual observations are averaged over a decade or more and the regression is estimated with a cross country sample of these averages a portfolio model of international capital allocation that is presented in the paper indicates that the short run change in the rate of net foreign investment in response to a sustained increase in domestic saving is likely to be substantially greater than the ultimate steady state response this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the effectiveness of aid on savings and investment in sub saharan africa do volatility and institutional quality matter abstractthe effectiveness of aid is somewhat subject to its volatility this study investigates the impact of aid volatility especially on savings and investment with a particular focus on the role of institutional quality in 45 sub saharan african ssa countries over the period from 1990 to 2013 we used the generalized method of moments gmm technique combined with a measure of volatility namely an averaged data method involving six 4 year sub periods our results suggest that while aid is positively associated with savings and investment its volatility is harmful to savings and investment however when higher quality institutions exist the volatility of aid has a less negative impact on savings and investment the policy implications are diverse first donors and ssa aid dependent countries need to take into account the diversity of shocks to which aid can respond in mitigating its unpredictability secondly ssa countries should be encouraged to establish the conditions for better quality inst

exchange rates trade liberalization and aid the sri lankan experience abstract in 1977 the sri lankan government embarked on an extensive program of liberalization an important element of which was devaluation to ensure a competitive real exchange rate the 1980s were however marked by an increasing divergence between the real and nominal exchange rates the depreciation of the latter not being matched by similar movements of the former this paper presents an econometric model of real exchange rate behavior in sri lanka among other things it is shown that increased aid inflows have made a significant contribution to the failure of the real exchange rate to match the depreciation in the nominal rate

complex losses allocation to generators and loads based on circuit theory and aumann shapley method this paper presents a new method to allocate active and reactive losses simultaneously to generators and loads the allocation is calculated for each transmission branch identifying and quantifying the buses responsibilities in losses this is a two step process in the first step generators are modeled as current injections and loads as constant admittances in order to determine generator participations in losses in the second step loads are modeled as current sources and generators as constant admittances in order to determine load participations in losses the aumann shapley and circuit theories are used to calculate the participation of each real and imaginary current component considering them as independent players in the complex losses allocation game the properties of the aumann shapley method ensure equitable allocation and recovery of the total active and reactive losses counter flow cross subsidy and negative allocation issues are discussed numerical results are presented and discussed to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method

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

climate change mitigation and agricultural development models primary commodity exports or local consumption production abstract the increasing demand for agricultural products partly due to the high population growth requires agriculture to struggle for productivity improvement however productivity search is constrained by environmental preoccupations raising the question of agricultural development models to be adopted to increase productivity while limiting environmental consequences this paper examines the role of market orientation by assessing the effect of agricultural commodity export on greenhouse gas emissions relatively to local market oriented agricultural production model using panel data from 1986 to 2010 for 136 countries around the world and accurate instrumental variables technique the findings suggest that the proportion of primary commodity export in agricultural production increases greenhouse gas emissions these results are robust to different sources of agricultural export and environmental data and to the inclusion of additional control variables

the dynamic impact of renewable energy consumption on co2 emissions a revisited environmental kuznets curve approach this paper considers a revisited environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis with potential impact of renewable energy consumption on environmental quality to this end paper aims at investigating the validity of the ekc hypothesis employing the dependent variable of co2 emissions and regressors of gdp quadratic gdp and renewable energy consumption this paper hence analyzes this revisited ekc hypothesis to observe if i there exists an inverted u shaped relationship between environmental quality in terms of co2 emissions per capita income and per capita income squared and ii there exists a negative causality from renewables to co2 emissions within ekc model paper employs a panel data set of 17 oecd countries over the period 1977 2010 and launches panel fmols and panel dols estimations the findings support the ekc hypothesis for the panel and indicate that gdp per capita and gdp per capita squared have the impacts on co2 emissions positively and negatively respectively and that renewable energy consumption yields negative impact on co2 emissions another remark of this paper is that the validity of ekc does not depend on income level of individual countries of panel in which ekc hypothesis holds eventually paper argues that if countries carry out i policies i e for fair and easy access to the electricity from renewable sources and ii policies to increase renewables supply through i e improved renewable energy technologies they will be able to contribute to combating global warming problem as they increase their gdp s

estimating country specific environmental kuznets curves from panel data a bayesian shrinkage approach designing an efficient global climate policy turns out to be a difficult yet crucial task since there are noteworthy cross country differences in energy and carbon intensities in this article the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is tested for carbon dioxide co2 emissions and as a modelling technique the iterative bayesian shrinkage procedure is employed to handle the cross country differences the results suggest that first the ekc hypothesis is rejected for 47 out of the 51 countries considered when the heterogeneity in countries energy efficiencies and cross country differences in the co2 emissions trajectories are accounted for second a classification of the results with respect to the development levels of the countries concerned reveals that the emergence of an overall inverted u shaped curve is due to the fact that in high income countries increase in gross domestic product gdp decreases emissions while in low income countries emissions and gdp are positively correlated

macroeconomic conditions in the u s and congressional voting on environmental policy 1970 2008 using the environmental scorecard ratings of congressmen and senators published annually by the league of conservation voters we explore empirically whether political support for pro environment legislation aggregated across each legislative body is sensitive over time to changing economic conditions that is whether there is a political trade off between economic conditions and the environment using lcv scorecard ratings from 1970 to 2008 we find evidence consistent across both the house and senate that political support for the environment is related to per capita income but this general tendency can be decomposed into sharp differences by party

the heart kuznets curve understanding the relations between economic development and cardiac conditions abstract as countries turn wealthier some health indicators such as child mortality seem to have well defined trends however others including cardiovascular conditions do not follow clear linear patterns of change with economic development abnormal blood pressure is a serious health risk factor with consequences for population growth and longevity as well as public and private expenditure in health care and labor productivity this also increases the risk of the population in certain pandemics such as covid 19 to determine the correlation of income and blood pressure we analyzed time series for the mean systolic blood pressure sbp of men s population mmhg and nominal gross domestic product per capita gdppc for 136 countries from 1980 to 2008 using regression and statistical analysis by pearson s correlation r our study finds a trend similar to an inverted u shaped curve or a heart kuznets curve there is a positive correlation increase gdppc increase sbp in low income countries and a negative correlation in high income countries increase gdppc decrease sbp as country income rises people tend to change their diets and habits and have better access to health services and education which affects blood pressure however the latter two may not offset the rise in blood pressure until countries reach a certain income investing early in health education and preventive health care could avoid the sharp increase in blood pressure as countries develop and therefore avoiding the heart kuznets curve and its economic and human impacts

the macroeconomic impact of development aid a critical survey the early literature explained aid s macroeconomic impact in the context of the dual gap model showing a clear link between aid and growth many now believe that the empirical evidence shows there to be no such relationship this paper critically reviews the different theoretical perspectives the dual gap model the savings debate recipient fiscal response and aid as dutch disease and the empirical debates on aid savings and growth the basis for denying a relationship between aid and growth is shown to be weak though more recent areas of research offer promising directions for future work

an econometric analysis of health care expenditure a cross section study of the oecd countries this paper is an empirical examination of the determinants of aggregate health care expenditure the paper presents a systematic analysis of relationships across 19 oecd countries showing the effects of aggregate income institutional and socio demographic factors on health care expenditure the results indicate that institutional factors of the health systems in addition to per capita gross domestic product gdp contribute significantly to the explanation of the health care expenditure variation between countries for example the way physicians in outpatient care are paid and the mixture of public private funding and inpatient outpatient care

income distribution and co2 emission a comparative analysis for china and india abstract the aim of this paper is to test whether income inequality contributes to environmental degradation in china and india where both countries are giving a great concern about the implications of their unsustainable energy consumption to the environment not only to themselves but also to the global environmental sustainability by applying the bounds test approach to cointegration we found in both countries a long run but not a statistically significant relationship between income inequality and co 2 emissions both in the long run and in the short run the robustness of our cointegration results is also ascertained by using three different long run tests furthermore applying the variance decomposition analysis to examine the dynamic causal relationship between the gini coefficient of income distribution and co 2 emissions we found that income inequality was the least important factor in determining co 2 emissions and that there was no causality running in any direction between co 2 emissions and income inequality in both countries still income and energy consumption are the major determinants of co 2 emissions in both countries nevertheless even though the evidence is not statistically significant in the case of china it indicates that reducing income inequality can have a positive impact on environmental quality while in india redistributing income to improve environmental degradation may not be effective

does concessionary aid lead to higher investment rates in low income countries goedde alan g u s multinational manufacturing firms the determinants and effects of foreign investment ph d dissertation duke university 1978 grubaugh stephen g the process of direct foreign investment working paper bentley college aug 1986 helpman elhanan a simple theory of international trade with multinational corporations journal of political economy 3 june 1984 451 471 horst thomas firm and industry determinants of the decision to invest abroad an empirical study this review 54 aug 1972 258 266 at home abroad a study of domestic and foreign operations of the a merican food processing industry cambridge ma ballinger 1974 hymer stephen h the international operations of national firms a study of direct foreign investment ph d dissertation m i t published by m i t press 1976 judge george g r carter hill william e griffiths helmut lutkepohl and tsoung chao lee introduction to the theory and practice of econometrics new york john wiley and sons 1982 macdougal g d a the benefits and costs of private investment from abroad a theoretical approach economic record 36 mar 1960 13 35 markusen james r multinationals multiplant economies and the gains from trade journal of international economics 3 4 may 1984 205 226 pindyck robert s and daniel l rubinfeld econometric models and economic forecasts second edition new york mcgraw hill 1981 rugman allen m inside the multinationals the economics of internal markets new york columbia university press 1981 vaupel james w and joan p curhan the making of multinational enterprise cambridge division of research graduate school of business administration harvard university 1969

economic growth export and external debt causality the case of african countries empirical investigation of the export driven economic growth hypothesis has provided mixed results in a bivariate causality framework the problem with such bivariate causality analysis is that there can be an omitted variable which could adversely affect the results this paper looks at the trivariate causality analysis of african countries by introducing external deby servicing as a third variable in the export economic growth analysis the results indicate that there is a feedback or bidirectional causality between external debt servicing economic growth and exports evidence of the 1983 90 subperiod is consistent with the argument that the structural adjustment programmes which were designed to remove economic distortions promote exports and encourage external debt management increased growth in the countries involved

does skewed pattern of income distribution matter for the environmental quality evidence from selected brics economies with an application of quantile on quantile regression qqr approach abstract using annual data from 1980 to 2014 the study explores the relationship between carbon emissions and skewed pattern of income distribution among 4 selected brics economies e g brazil india china and south africa using quantile on quantile regression qqr technique of sim and zhou 2015 it tries to contribute towards an empirical understanding on the quantile structure of both the variables for the selected brics countries it finds for india and brazil that as income rises although both lower and upper income people degrade the environmental quality by releasing more co2 emissions but interestingly it is the poor who intensively degrade the environmental quality than the rich in sharp contrast for china and south africa it finds that it is the poor who relatively contribute less to the environmental degradation by reducing co2 emissions than the rich these findings have greater policy significances which are discussed at the concluding section in greater detail

energy innovation and renewable energy consumption in the correction of air pollution levels abstract this study analyses the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution specifically it investigates the presence of an environmental kuznets curve ekc in 17 oecd countries over the period of 1990 2012 the results confirm the existence of an n shaped ekc relationship between income and environmental degradation the study offers a novel methodological contribution that makes it possible to explain the environmental pollution process through the analysis of low carbon technologies this demonstrates how income levels affect energy consumption and how higher energy demand leads to a larger share of fossil sources in the energy mix and thus increased greenhouse gas ghg emissions the effect on per capita ghg emissions is explored in a model containing a dampening variable that moderates the relationship between energy consumption and income this empirical evidence helps to explain the interaction between energy regulation economic growth and carbon emissions this study also confirms the positive effect that energy innovation process exerts on environmental pollution finally it is noted that renewable energy sources help to improve air quality

the role of education in the environmental kuznets curve evidence from australian data abstract this paper is based on the underlying idea that the use of energy resources in a society significantly depends on their level of education then it is hypothesized that education might directly affect environmental quality by worsening it at early stages and improving it once education expands from its certain level thus we pursue an extension of the standard environmental kuznets curve by including an indicator of the evolution of citizens education this empirical strategy might avoid bias on income coefficients and in turn assess the value of education as environmental policy an application for australia is given to illustrate this possibility by using higher education data for a large time span 1950 2014 empirical results suggest that in most of the studied period expansion in education rate has increasingly compensated the rise of per capita co 2 emissions stemming from the economic growth moreover only in recent years both per capita income and education expansion have been proved to reduce emissions however provided that income growth is difficult to manage it would be worth considering the possibility of promoting education in order to achieve environmental objectives

redd and forest transition tunneling through the environmental kuznets curve abstract international attention is focused on finding ways to reduce emissions from deforestation because of the emerging concerns over climate change however the causes of deforestation are rooted in current economic and development paradigms the causes of deforestation also vary across different geographical regions and have implications for the forest transition attempts to reach an international agreement on curbing deforestation have achieved little success despite over 30 years of un negotiations new initiatives from redd reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation could provide financial incentives to curb deforestation hence alternative development paths for forest cover changes and forest transition are analyzed for the redd policy within the framework of an environmental kuznets curve ekc for deforestation the ekc models are estimated for geographical regions of latin america africa and asia the results based on the panel data analysis of 43 countries covering the period 1970 1994 provides evidence that an inverted u shaped ekc fits for latin america and africa while a u shaped ekc applies to asia the results also indicate that strengthening agricultural and forestry sector policies are important for curbing deforestation the ekc models estimates could provide guidance for decisions on financing the redd policy as specific to each region

income inequality and pollution a reassessment of the environmental kuznets curve abstract improvements in some measures of air and water quality can accompany rising per capita income as illustrated by the so called environmental kuznets curve for pollution variables which show such a relationship we hypothesize that a more equitable distribution of power contributes to these outcomes by enhancing the influence on policy of those who bear the costs of pollution relative to the influence of those who benefit from pollution generating activities an empirical analysis of international variations in seven indicators of air and water quality supports this hypothesis literacy political rights and civil liberties are found to have particularly strong effects on environmental quality in low income countries

the impact of environmental regulation shadow economy and corruption on environmental quality theory and empirical evidence from china abstract mounting environmental pressures led china to focus on the effectiveness of the environmental regulation to control pollution since the shadow economy or underground economic activities that are not included in official statistics accounts for an increasing fraction of china s economy its impacts on environmental quality should be carefully evaluated in this study the main research questions are as follows 1 what is the extent of the effect of environmental regulation on environmental quality and 2 what are the factors that influence the impact of environmental regulation on environmental pollution a theoretical model is developed to explain the relationship among the environmental regulation shadow economy and environmental quality in china an empirical analysis is conducted to test the three propositions of the model thereby examining the explanatory power of the theoretical model concretely using panel data from 30 provinces for the period of 1998 2012 the generalized method of moments gmm method is employed to control for potential endogeneity and introduce dynamic effects the estimation results indicate that stringent environmental regulation and the level of the shadow economy are both positively related to china s environmental pollution however the results also indicate that tighter environmental control would help reduce pollution at a given level of the shadow economy moreover an increase in the proportion of corrupt officials may weaken the environmental regulation which would consequently lead to the increase in illegal production and total pollutant emissions besides many economic and social factors may also affect the environmental quality for instance the development of secondary industry contributes toward an increase in pollutant emissions however increased research and development r d spending on eco friendly industrial operations can help to reduce pollution

politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid abstract critics of foreign aid programs have long argued that poverty reflects government failure in this paper i test predictions for aid effectiveness based on an analytical framework that relates aid effectiveness to political regimes i find that aid does not significantly increase investment nor benefit the poor as measured by improvements in human development indicators but it does increase the size of government the impact of aid does not vary according to whether recipient governments are liberal democratic or highly repressive but liberal political regimes and democracies ceteris paribus have on average 30 lower infant mortality than the least free regimes this may be due to greater empowerment of the poor under liberal regimes even though the political elite continues to receive the benefits of aid programs an implication is that short term aid targeted to support new liberal regimes may be a more successful means of reducing poverty than current programs

sharing a polluted river abstract a river carries pollutants to people living along it if it is polluted to make the water in the river clean some costs are incurred this poses a question of how to split the costs of cleaning the whole river among the agents located along it to answer this question we resort to the two main advocated doctrines in international disputes the theory of absolute territorial sovereignty ats and the theory of unlimited territorial integrity uti applying these two doctrines we accordingly propose two methods the local responsibility sharing lrs method and the upstream equal sharing ues method for each method we provide an axiomatic characterization interestingly both the lrs method and the ues method coincide with the shapley value solutions to the corresponding cost games that are naturally induced according to the ats and the uti doctrines respectively

performance in living standards abstract our ultimate objective is to enhance the standard of living of our societies but the standard of living has different meanings for different people a thorough investigation of the concept of the standard of living has been made only recently by sen who defines it in terms of functioning and capabilities functioning is an achievement whereas capability is the ability to achieve the main objective of the present paper is to compare achievements levels and improvement changes in the standard of living across countries using an axiomatic approach an achievement index is derived which accomodates the view that a further increase in the standard of living of a country when it is already at a higher level signifies an achievement greater than that of another with an equal increase but from a lower base the paper also tests for the statistical relationship between indicators of the countries standards of living so derived in their capita gdp the question posed is whether the aggregate income which provides people with the means to achieve a better life can be used as proxy measure of the standard living and extent to which the country s improvement in the standard of living can be explained by the levels and changes in the per capita income the analysis presented in the paper is based on the data from 80 developing countries

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

aid growth and devolution summary this paper examines whether the degree of fiscal decentralization in aid receiving countries matters in explaining aid effectiveness the decentralization theorem predicts that the devolution of powers should increase aid effectiveness since local decision makers are better informed about local needs thereby decentralization may also have reverse effects e g through coordination problems excessive regulation administrative costs and local capture we use panel data for up to 60 countries and find that aid contributes to economic growth in centralized developing economies whereas it is less effective or even harmful in decentralized countries the cases of indonesia the philippines and uganda support our findings our results imply that donor countries should carefully consider how the two development instruments foreign aid and decentralization interact

economic growth in africa abstract this paper draws on the recent endogenous growth methodology to study the factors behind differences in per capita growth rates across africa the results indicate that various economic factors including initial conditions investment population growth trade orientation inflation financial development and the growth of the government sector contribute significantly to economic growth in addition to economic variables we find the degree of political freedom to be a significant contributor to economic growth finally we find some evidence that economic growth by the members of the cfa franc zone has not fared well in comparison to other african countries