political instability corruption and policy formation the case of environmental policy abstract this paper develops a theory of environmental policy formation taking into consideration the degree of corruptibility and political turbulence the predictions that emerge are that the interaction between the two variables is important political instability has a negative effect on the stringency of environmental regulations if the level of corruption is low but a positive effect when the degree of corruption is high corruption reduces the stringency of environmental regulations but the effect disappears as political instability increases the empirical findings are fully consistent with the predictions of the model

on multiplicity of consistent conjectures in free entry oligopoly abstract if we allow free entry into oligopoly we should take into account the fact that the number of firms is variable therefore we should include it in the arguments of the conjectural variation functions and consider a conjectural variation for the change in the number of firms we will show that for such conjectural variation functions there exist multiple consistent conjectures equilibria in free entry oligopoly

the case of the vanishing revenues auction quotas with oligopoly this paper examines the effects of auctioning quota licenses when monopoly power exists here the sales of licenses will never raise any revenue if domestic and foreign markets are segmented more surprisingly the inability to raise revenue is shown to persist even when arbitrage across markets is possible as long as the quota is not too far from the free trade import level this suggests that existing revenue estimates from auctioning quota licenses which are based on the assumption of competition are upwardly biased it also makes it likely that quotas implemented by auctioning licenses even when set optimally have adverse welfare effects copyright 1990 by american economic association

between estimates of the emissions income elasticity abstract recent papers by wagner and vollebergh et al point out some fundamental econometric problems with traditional methods of estimating the environmental kuznets curve ekc and propose alternative approaches that avoid these issues wagner notes that traditional methods do not take into account the presence of powers of unit root variables and cross sectional dependence in the data while vollebergh et al point out that the time effects are not uniquely identified in the ekc model the between estimator is a simple estimator that also addresses the concerns of these authors it makes no a priori assumption about the nature of the time effects and is likely to provide consistent estimates of long run relationships in real world data situations i apply several common panel data estimators including the between estimator to oecd and global carbon and sulfur emissions datasets the between estimates of the sulfur income elasticity are 0 732 in the oecd and 1 067 in the global data set and the estimated carbon income elasticity is 1 612 in the oecd and 1 509 globally

determinants of emissions growth in oecd countries abstract this paper analyses the sources of growth in energy related greenhouse gas emissions for oecd countries over the period 1982 1997 it employs a decomposition formula that separates out the effects of changes in population economic growth energy intensity of output in aggregate and by sector primary energy use in final energy consumption the share of fossil fuels and the carbon intensity of fossil fuel combustion it is shown that in general growth in emissions depends on how effectively energy use can be changed to offset the effects of economic growth across the oecd as a whole growth in emissions has been mainly due to economic growth both gdp per capita and population growth as well as an increase in primary energy required for final energy consumption offset by falling energy intensities and a declining share of fossil fuels overall the large fall in the energy intensity of oecd economies over 1982 1997 has been driven primarily by falling energy intensities in the services and industry sectors of the usa and the services sector of the european union but these have been offset somewhat by rising energy intensity of services in japan the influence of falling energy intensities and the declining share of fossil fuels weakened in the five year period 1992 1997 resulting in faster emissions growth there were sharp difference between countries with population growth and worsening fuel mix playing a much stronger role in the usa compared to the eu and japan but with the us making much larger reductions in energy use per unit of gdp the analysis suggests that opportunities to reduce emissions are more limited in germany the uk and japan with more opportunities in the usa canada the netherlands and australia

monopoly and trade policy abstract this paper derives trade policy rankings for a country trading with a foreign monopoly firm it characterizes the first best policy under decreasing monopoly costs and itdemonstrates that a minimum import requirement implements first best trade only under constant monopoly costs the paper shows further that a voluntary import expansion eliminates all gains from trading with the monopoly and that all quotas and voluntary export restraints are equivalent finally it establishes that a price ceiling and a minimum import requirement are equivalent when monopoly costs are constant or decreasing but that their ranking is ambiguous when costs are increasing

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

identifying reduced form relations with panel data the case of pollution and income abstract in this paper we propose a solution to the non robustness that plagues the estimation of inverted u shaped relationships using panel data such as the relation between pollution and income when dependent and independent variable like pollution and income are both time related separating the effect of the independent variable from time effects brings about a fundamental identification dilemma the imposition of restrictions on the controls might drive the shape of the relationship between the dependent pollution and independent income variables our solution consists of imposing the very weak constraint that arbitrary cross sectional units have the same relationship we apply our methodology to two widely studied cases namely so 2 and co 2 emissions interestingly our estimates are insensitive to the required subjective choices but also strongly differ from the literature so far we find consistent positive income effects for both cases and time effect estimates with a clear u shaped trend for so 2 emissions but only slightly so for co 2 emissions

optimal taxation and heterogeneous oligopoly this paper examines the effects of firm specific taxes on an oligopoly composed of firms of unequal sizes holding different conjectures operating with nonidentical costs four types of effects are analyzed on profits on industry concentration on total tax revenue and on social welfare the author derives 1 the revenue maximizing taxes 2 the welfare maximizing taxes and 3 welfare maximizing taxes subject to a revenue constraint

pricing strategies in supergames with capacity constraints some evidence from the u s portland cement industry abstract theory demonstrates that demand variations can have nonmonotonic effects on pricing in supergames with capacity constraints furthermore this nonmonotonic relationship can be a function of capacity utilization rates time series data from 25 regional cement markets are used to examine this results empirically no statistically significant relationship is found between demand variations pricing and excess capacity

an analysis of import expansion policies an analysis of import expansion policies 1 introduction policy makers appear to display unlimited ingenuity in devising new and ever more complex measures to influence international trade no sooner did the profession come to understand the economics of trade restricting devices such as tariffs quotas and voluntary export restraints vers the discirminatory nature of vers has been recently noted and analyzed in dinopoulos and kreinin 1988 1989 then a new policy instrument was introduced christened by bhagwati 1987 as voluntary import expansion vie in several recent instances the united states insisted that japan voluntarily expand its import of certain products such as semiconductors or beef from the united states while the ver restricts the volume of trade below free market equilibrium the vie would expand the volume of trade beyond the equilibrium level but both policies depart from free trade equilibrium and both are discriminatory in nature a ver that limits japanese auto exports to the u s favors european suppliers who are excluded from the restriction their thems of trade improve and or their volume of export expands a vie that forces the japanese to import a minimum amount of semiconductors from the united states excludes european suppliers a similar vie on beef imports would discriminate against australian and argentinian suppliers it constitutes a form of export protectionism bhagwati and irwin 1987 how might a government administer a vie in the case of semiconductor imports by japan the possibilities are a subsidy by the japanese government on imports from the u s or an instruction to the large chip using companies in japan to purchase more american chips 1 alternatively the japanese government may buy u s chips for its own use or it may favor american suppliers in awarding contracts in the fall of 1987 certain japanese steel companies agreed under miti pressure to expand purchases of american coal even though it costs a7 per ton more than australian coal and in january 1988 1 an instance of a vie in the construction sector came to light japan had been under american pressure to permit u s construction companies to bid on large japanese public works projects like the kansai airport near osaka and the tokyo bay bridge such projects can amount to 70 billion in the next decade in response the japanese government proposed to permit joint foreign japanese companies to bid on these projects and give american companies preferential treatment in forming such partnership this paper analyzes the economic effects of a vie and whenever appropriate compares it to an export subsidy whereas the export subsidy is an instrument used by the exporting country the vie is a policy instrument employed by the importing country section ii presents a comparison between the two instruments within a two country general equilibrium framework when the offer curves are elastic section iii addresses the question of the optimum vie and compares it to the optimum tariff section iv analyzes the case when the offer curve of the vie administering country is enelastic another key distinction between a vie and an export subsidy is that the former is discriminatory between different trading partners while the latter is not section iv incorporates this feature by recasting the analysis in a three country general equilibrium framework section v states the conclusions of the paper ii view versus export subsidy a two country analysis with elastic offer curves in coventional trade geometry an export subsidy assumed as usual to be financed by a lump sum tax is shown by an outward shift namely an increase of the offer curve of the subsidizing country by contrast a graphical representation of a vie is more complex and is displayed in figure 1

optimal cartel trigger price strategies abstract a dynamical model of industry equilibrium is described in which a cartel deters deviations from collusive output levels by threatening to produce at cournot quantities for a period of fixed duration whenever the market price falls below some trigger price in this model firms can observe only their own production level and a common market price the market demand curve is assumed to have a stochastic component so that an unexpectedly low price may signal either deviations from collusive output levels or a downward demand shock

recent advances in oligopoly theory from a game theory perspective abstract this paper surveys the contribution that recent developments in game theory have made to the understanding of oligopoly theory it is argued that conventional models suffer from the problem that there are a number of solution concepts offered with little guidance as to which should be selected and this is related to the static nature of the models employed one important development in game theory has been the analysis of repeated games and when applied to oligopoly theory this suggests that outcomes may be more cooperative than conventional theory suggests related to this is the requirement that firms employ credible threats to punish cheating from cooperative outcomes and the paper examines the extent to which imperfect information may restrict the scope of firms to employ such punishments one way in which firms may seek to make threats credible is through strategic investments for example in production capacity and the paper explores how competition over price or output is integrated with competition over instruments for strategic investment

a unified framework for analysing price interdependence innovative activity and exchange rate pass through this paper develops an international oligopoly model in which domestic and foreign firms simultaneously choose their price and innovation strategies under the assumption of non zero conjectural variations in relation to their competitors price changes the model captures the links between the exchange rate foreign and domestic firms prices and investment in process innovation and provides a unified framework for analysing exchange rate pass through

the inconsistency of consistent conjectures abstract conjectural variation models have been criticized because firms are right for the wrong reasons and because possible equilibria are abundant lately several papers have attempted to meet these difficulties by some condition of consistency or rationality on the conjectural variation this paper shows that stronger versions of such conditions lead into paradoxes while the weaker forms are of little use in solving the conceived problems the original cournot assumption actually satisfies consistency enterions the problems with consistent conjectures illuminates fundmental problems with too demanding information assumptions like perfect foresight such assumptions may create non trivial structures of self reference

pollution shadow economy and corruption theory and evidence abstract we study how the shadow economy affects pollution and how this effect depends on corruption levels in public administration production in the shadow economy allows firms to avoid environmental regulation policies a large informal sector may be accompanied by higher pollution levels our theoretical model predicts that controlling the levels of corruption can limit the effect of the shadow economy on pollution we use panel data covering the period from 1999 to 2005 in more than 100 countries to test this theoretical prediction our estimates confirm that the relationship between the shadow economy and the levels of pollution are dependent on the levels of corruption our results hold when we control for the effects of other determinants of pollution time varying common shocks country fixed effects and various additional covariates

sunk costs and cartel formation theory and application to the dyestuff industry we first develop a simple model of entry showing that cartels are more likely to emerge during periods of downturns and in industries with significant sunk costs cartel formation is also accompanied by a decline in profits we then use the framework to investigate the emergence of the swiss dyestuff export cartel during the inter war period and find empirical evidence that supports the main predictions of the model the analysis indicates that sunk costs and entry may be important determinants of cartel formation and are complementary to the traditional cartel stability conditions

rational conjectures in the theory of oligopoly abstract the paper employs the notion of rational conjectural equilibrium to remove the arbitrary nature of conjectures about rivals reactions which characterises the traditional non cooperative theory of oligopoly a general definition of these equilibria is given and the concept is then applied to a simple duopoly model the standard models of perfect competition monopoly limit price dominant firms are shown to emerge as special cases of rational conjectural equilibria

can branding and price of pharmaceuticals guide informed choices towards improved pollution control during manufacturing abstract pharmaceutical manufacturing can lead to substantial discharges of active pharmaceutical ingredients into the environment with local consequences to the environment and in the case of antibiotics potentially global implications in terms of increasing risks for resistance development in this study we used swedish sales data for pharmaceuticals combined with data on the origin of the active ingredients to determine if price pressure and generic substitution are related to the estimated general environmental performance and the perceived corruption levels of the production countries in line with the general perception india was the largest producer of generics while europe and the usa dominated for branded products we found that the price and environmental performance index of the production countries were linked but that this relationship was largely explained by whether the product was original or generic although this relationship would allow buyers to select products that are more likely to originate from countries that in general terms have better pollution control it lacks resolution we conclude that to better allow consumers hospitals and pharmacies to influence the environmental impact of their product choices there is need for regulation as well as transparency in the production chain to this end emissions from manufacturing need to be measured allowing for control and follow up on industry commitments towards sustainable manufacturing of pharmaceuticals

what explains carbon pricing variation between countries abstract economists generally view carbon pricing as an efficient policy to address externalities from energy use but political feasibility can be a persistent issue this paper aims to comprehensively consider underlying factors contributing to carbon pricing magnitude including environmental social political and economic variables we use the between estimator and focus on exogenous variables to explain continuous carbon pricing variables for a global sample of countries we find that larger coal reserves per capita have a negative effect on the log of the product of carbon price levels and coverage control of corruption is a key governance variable that is positively associated with carbon pricing outcomes another important political dimension is the degree of political globalisation for economic resources there is evidence that larger stocks of domestic credit help to enable carbon pricing there is some evidence that climate change awareness is positively associated with carbon pricing but the proportion perceiving climate change as a serious threat is negatively associated with carbon pricing our global results complement case study approaches that consider carbon pricing design for local contexts

on sunk costs and trade liberalization in appled general equilibrium the authors argue that the rationalization gains often predicted by static applied general equilibrium models with imperfect competition and scale economies are artificially boosted by an unrealistic treatment of fixed costs they introduce sunk costs into one such model calibrated with real world data the authors show how this changes the oligopoly game in a way significant enough to affect both qualitatively and quantitatively the outcome of a trade liberalization exercise copyright 1996 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

collusion profitability and welfare theory and evidence abstract in a differentiated oligopoly model with free entry the static welfare loss from collusion is larger the lower the entry cost the larger the market size and the higher the degree of product differentiation the cartel overcharge is larger the lower the entry cost and the larger the market size and is independent of the degree of product differentiation these theoretical results are consistent with evidence from a natural experiment of policy reform the introduction of cartel law in the uk in the late 1950s price cost margins declined after the breakdown of cartels in low capital and larger sized industries relative to capital intensive and smaller sized ones there is weaker evidence of a fall in price cost margins in consumer good and advertising intensive relative to producer good and low advertising industries crucially these effects are not observed for industries that were not affected by the cartel law a comparison of these findings with evidence on the incidence of collusion suggests that the welfare loss from collusive pricing may often be smaller in industries where cartels tend to form than in those where collusion is more difficult to sustain

corruption and the environmental kuznets curve empirical evidence for sulfur abstract we investigate how corruption influences the income level at the turning point of the relationship between sulfur emissions and income using a wide cross national panel of countries at different levels of development and with different degrees of corruption our results support the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for sulfur we find evidence that the higher the country s degree of corruption the higher the per capita income at the turning point suggesting different income pollution paths across countries due to corruption we build upon a new specification for the ekc developed by bradford et al 2005 that avoids using nonlinear transformations of potentially nonstationary regressors in panel estimation also we account for the indirect impact of corruption on emissions through its impact on per capita income our main findings remain unchanged when we investigate additional heterogeneity allowing for different income slopes across richer and poorer countries

democracy and environmental quality we develop and estimate an econometric model of the relationship between several local and global air pollutants and economic development while allowing for critical aspects of the socio political economic regime of a state we obtain empirical support for our hypothesis that democracy and its associated freedoms provide the conduit through which agents can exercise their preferences for environmental quality more effectively than under an autocratic regime thus leading to decreased concentrations or emissions of pollution however additional factors such as income inequality age distribution education and urbanization may mitigate or exacerbate the net effect of the type of political regime on pollution depending on the underlying societal preferences and the weights assigned to those preferences by the state

tacit collusion free entry and welfare the effect of collusion under free entry has a long history of analysis in economics yet many of the central issues remain unresolved of particular interest is the interaction between the number of firms in the industry and the degree of collusion in the industry there are two relationships that might reasonably exist between the number of firms and collusion on one hand collusion is made easier if the number of firms is small but on the other hand an industry that successfully colludes will earn short run above normal profits and attract new entry until profits are driven to zero in this paper we model the interaction between these two forces and present in a simple diagram an illustration of the determination of equilibrium entry and collusion we are also concerned with the implications of such a structure for public policy in particular direct anti collusive policies and entry fees are examined one preliminary point to address is why collusion should occur at all if profits are going to be driven to zero in any case 1 first of all it is only marginal firms that must earn zero profits so if there are asymmetries between firms inframarginal firms might hope to gain from collusion even in the long run our analysis however focusses on the case of symmetric firms all firms earn zero profits in the long run even in this case the profit that can be earned in the short run implies that the present discounted value of an increase in the degree of collusion is positive furthermore once a collusive zero profit equilibrium is reached industry participants will want to maintain collusion so as to avoid the short run losses that would result from a breakdown in collusive arrangements this is similar to the transitional gains trap described in tullock 9751 certainly a fairly large class of industries seem to be characterized by partial collusion and free entry providers of professional services are an important example there is a wide variation in the ability and income of different providers of the same professional services nevertheless in most professions there are individuals at the margin earning zero economic profit moreover in many countries professionals such as lawyers and dentists are

conjectures rationality and duopoly theory abstract the main results of this paper are twofold first we show that any sustainable pair of production programs can be obtained as a locally rational conjectural equilibrium for appropriately chosen linear conjectural functions for the duopolists then we show that constant conjectural variations duopoly models could in a sense be made rational if the value of the conjectural variation is considered not as a constant but rather as a specific value taken at the equilibrium

the effect of domestic antidumping law in the presence of foreign monopoly abstract we analyze the effects of antidumping law when utilized by competitive domestic petitioners against a foreign monopolist the monopolist reduces the cost of holding excess capacity in periods of slack foreign demand by dumping on the domestic market antidumping law reduces trade volume both directly under successful petitions and indirectly when no petition is filed by causing the monopolist to alter its capacity and the allocation of that capacity between markets finally we consider the effects of self enforcing agreements in which the domestic industry agrees not to file in exchange for a promise that the foreign monopolist limit exports

cartel enforcement with uncertainty about costs what cartel agreements are possible when firms have private information about production costs in order for a cartel agreement to work it must take into account the incentives for firms to misrepresent their cost information and it must provide sufficient reward so that no firm wishes to defect for private cost uncertainty we characterize the set of cartel agreements with side payments that can be supported as bayesian nash equilibria we show that if defection results in either cournot or bertrand competition the incentive problems in large cartels are severe enough to prevent the cartel from achieving the monopoly outcome in contrast with common cost uncertainty the incentive problems become less severe in large cartels allowing perfect collusion

the evolution of consistent conjectures in this paper we model the evolution of conjectures in an economy consisting of a large number of firms which meet in duopolies the duopoly game is modelled by the conjectural variation cv model an evolutionary process leads to more profitable conjectures becoming more common payoff monotonic dynamics under this class of selection dynamics convergence occurs to a small set of serially undominated strategies containing the consistent conjecture this set can be made arbitrarily small by appropriate choice of the strategy set if the game is dominance solvable then the dynamics converge globally to the unique attractor

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

corruption income and the environment an empirical analysis abstract in response to the recent growth of a largely theoretical body of literature analysing the linkages between corruption and pollution this paper subjects the corruption pollution relationship to a detailed empirical examination a distinction is drawn between the direct impact of corruption on pollution and the indirect impact which operates through corruption s impact on per capita income and the resultant impact of income on pollution using data for 94 countries covering the period 1987 2000 both direct and indirect impacts of corruption on air pollution emissions are estimated for both sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide corruption is estimated to have a positive direct impact on per capita emissions indirect effects are found to be negative and larger in absolute value than direct effects for the majority of the sample income range as a result the total effect of corruption on emissions is negative for all but the highest income countries in the sample

reassessing the environmental kuznets curve for co2 emissions a robustness exercise the number of studies seeking to empirically characterize the reduced form relationship between a country economic growth and the quantity of pollutants produced in the process has recently increased significantly in several cases researchers have found evidence pointing to an inverted u benvironmental kuznetsq curve in the case of co2 however the evidence is at best mixed in this paper we reconsider that evidence by assessing how robust it is when the analysis is conducted in a different parametric setup and when using alternative emissions data from the international energy agency relative to the literature our contribution can be viewed as a robustness exercise in these two respects the econometric results lead to two conclusions firstly published evidence on the ekc does not appear to depend upon the source of the data at least as far as carbon dioxide is concerned secondly when an alternative functional form is employed there is evidence of an inverted u pattern for the group of oecd countries with reasonable turning point regardless of the data set employed not so for non oecd countries as the ekc is basically increasing slowly concave according to the iea data and more bellshaped in the case of cdiac data d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

collusion among asymmetric firms the case of different discount factors abstract this study investigates collusive behavior among asymmetric firms for this purpose we develop a selection criterion for deriving a unique collusive outcome and apply it to the case when firms have different discount factors our analysis reveals that for collusion to be self enforcing it is unnecessary that all firms have sufficiently high discount factors but rather only that firms on average have a sufficiently long run view the optimal collusive outcome entails a strict ordering of output quotas in which firms with relatively low discount factors receive a disproportionate share of market demand as found in the case of a common discount factor a fall in a firm s discount factor reduces the likelihood of successful collusion this effect reduces firm profits on the other hand in the event that firms can collude a lowering of a firm s discount factor increases its output quota so that its profits rise

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

an empirical study of the impact of corruption on environmental performance evidence from panel data this paper extends the empirical debate on the effects of corruption on environmental degradation by considering a recently available measure of environmental quality the environmental performance index this indicator is more comprehensive than the measures of air pollutant emissions commonly used in the literature and in particular can also capture the impact of pollution on human health this allows for a better understanding of the actual effects of a wide range of human activities on the ecosystem from a panel data analysis two regularities emerge first corruption deteriorates the overall environmental quality this effect is robust and persistent second our findings highlight the improvement of environmental quality as income rises even at an initial level of development this is not in contradiction with the ekc hypothesis because an increase in income levels provides positive externalities on the whole environmental quality by compensating the mere negative effects induced by industrialization on the emission levels as a consequence in emerging economies policies fighting corruption and enhancing development are very likely to improve the environmental performances

corruption pollution and the kuznets environment curve abstract this paper examines the implications of corruption and rent seeking behavior by the government for the relationship between pollution and growth cases of both cooperative and non cooperative interaction between the government and the private firm are studied it is shown that corruption is not likely to preclude the existence of an inverted u shaped kuznets environmental curve under both these cases however for any level of per capita income the pollution levels corresponding to corrupt behavior are always above the socially optimal level further the turning point of the kuznets curve takes place at income and pollution levels above those corresponding to the social optimum

trade taxes and subsidies with imperfect competition abstract traditional results in the theory of international trade suggest that a country large enough to influence world prices can raise its national income by levying a tariff in a partial equilibrium model brander and spencer 1984 suggest that a country facing a monopolistic supplier of importables may find it optimal to subsidize this activity rather that tax it this result is reconsidered in a general equilibrium framework it is in general correct but specific and ad valorem forms of taxation may yield different results

is there an environmental kuznets curve for sulfur abstract most existing estimates of the environmental kuznets curve ekc for sulfur which use samples of mainly high income countries indicate a maximum emissions turning point at middle to lower high income levels of gdp per capita we use a larger and more globally representative sample than previous sulfur ekc studies we find that sulfur emissions per capita are a monotonic function of income per capita when we use a global sample and an inverted u shape function of income when we use a sample of high income countries a model estimated in first differences results in a monotonic ekc when estimated with both high income and global samples reductions in emissions are time related rather than income related

the effect of growth and corruption on soil sealing in italy a regional environmental kuznets curve analysis this paper analyses and looks more closely at the empirical debate regarding the income elasticity hypothesis postulated in relation to the environmental kuznets curve and the impact of corruption on the relationship between growth and environmental impact measured in terms of soil sealing as proxied by the number of building permits issued by public authorities it postulates that when current private rent is high compared to perceived social costs and a large enough minority benefits from the rules the ekc does not emerge and public intervention fails to perceive social optimality to validate this hypothesis we run a panel data regression model based on data from all italian regions results confirmed the hypothesis evidencing a u shaped relationship i e a detrimental relationship between income and environmental impact quality it also demonstrated that this is contingent on the level of corruption the latter affects the position and the shape of the inverted ekc speeding up the exploitation process it shows that the higher the income the higher the effect of corruption on the environment therefore it advocates caution against any simplistic inference from ekc