environmental policy in the european union fostering the development of pollution havens abstract a pollution haven occurs when dirty industries from developed nations relocate to developing nations in order to avoid strict environmental standards or developed nations imports of dirty industries expand replacing domestic production the purpose of this study is to determine whether the european union eu has increased its imports of dirty goods from poorer less democratic countries during a period of more stringent environmental standards previous empirical studies such as those by levinson and taylor levinson a and taylor m s in press unmasking the pollution haven effect international economic review ederington levinson and minier ederington j levinson a and minier j 2005 footloose and pollution free review of economics and statistics 87 92 99 kahn and yoshino 2004 and ederington and minier ederington j and minier j 2003 is environmental policy a secondary trade barrier an empirical analysis canadian journal of economics 36 137 54 find evidence that united states imports are responsive to changes in environmental stringency but the effects of eu policy have not been examined as thoroughly our study follows kahn kahn m e 2003 the geography of us pollution intensive trade evidence from 1958 to 1994 regional science and urban economics 33 383 400 and examines the impact of industry energy intensity and toxicity measured by an energy index and a toxic release inventory tri index on imports into the eu at the 2 digit industry level from 1970 to 1999 we use the signing of the maastricht treaty to signify a period of more uniform and stringent community wide environmental standards 1993 1999 and identify the level of per capita gdp within an eu trading partner we find an increased amount of eu energy intensive trade with poorer countries during the period with more stringent eu environmental standards this result is not robust however when poorer countries are defined by oecd membership and geographic region we do not find an increased amount of eu toxic intensive trade with poorer countries although there is some evidence of increased eu imports of toxic goods from poorer oecd and non eu european countries for our full sample of trading partners in all regions the evidence supports the phh for eu energy intensive trade but not for toxic intensive trade results for regional trade analysis are less clear

assessing income population and technology impacts on co2 emissions in canada where s the ekc abstract this study investigates the macroeconomic forces underlying carbon dioxide co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada in keeping with the relevant literature on environmental degradation three forces are expected to influence co2 emissions gross domestic product per capita gdp capita population and technological change while previous work has employed reduced form models that allow for non linear relationships between co2 and gdp capita it has been common practice to assume linear relationships between co2 and the latter two variables this study tests a more flexible model using a five region panel data set in canada over the period 1970 2000 findings indicate that gdp capita is unrelated to co2 that an inverted u shaped relationship exists with population and that a u shaped relationship exists with technology thus technological and population changes are supported over the commonly hypothesized environmental kuznets curve an inverted u shaped relationship between gdp capita and environmental degradation for affecting co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada

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

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

institutions and the environmental kuznets curve for deforestation a crosscountry analysis for latin america africa and asia abstract the relationship between deforestation and income across 66 countries of latin america africa and asia is examined institutional characteristics as well as macroeconomic policies of each country are hypothesized to impact deforestation results show strong evidence of an environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between income and deforestation for all three continents institutional structure and macroeconomic policy significantly affect the tropical deforestation process improvements in political institutions and governance significantly reduce deforestation the factors leading to deforestation differ across regions however and there is no one size fits all global policy recommendation for restraining the tropical deforestation process

industrial pollution in economic development the environmental kuznets curve revisited abstract using new international data this paper tests the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for industrial water pollution we measure the effect of income growth on three determinants of pollution the share of industry in national output the share of polluting sectors in industrial output and end of pipe eop pollution intensities per unit of output in the polluting sectors we find that the industry share of national output follows a kuznets type trajectory but the other two determinants do not when combined our results imply rejection of the ekc hypothesis for industrial water pollution it rises rapidly through middle income status and remains roughly constant thereafter

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

baumol s disease and dematerialization of the economy this paper argues that there is reason to be skeptical about the idea that the transition to a service economy will bring about dematerialization of production and consequent environmental improvement this is because the shift to a service economy is an illusion in terms of real production but is instead generated by the fall in the price of manufacturing goods relative to services which is in turn caused by more rapid productivity growth in manufacturing than in services this argument relies on the insights baumol provided on the nature of the service economy and uses swedish long term data on relative sectoral development as an empirical illustration on the other hand the paper argues that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that structural change may bring about a greening of growth namely the changes in growth patterns sometimes labeled the third industrial revolution which is connected to the emergence of microelectronics swedish co2 emissions show a decline after 1970 which is mainly explained by a politically driven change in the mix of energy carriers but is also related to the stabilization of energy consumption this energy stabilization was caused by slow growth of the economy in conjunction with substantial declines in energy intensity within industrial sectors and an absence of relative growth of the heavy sectors a growth that had marked the economy between 1870 and 1970 microelectronics have contributed to permanently transforming the swedish industrial sector in a lighter direction reducing energy losses in heavy industries and stabilizing household energy consumption so it appears as if there may be some environmental gains from this development that was initiated in the 1970s but not from relatively more production in the service sector

is there a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions abstract we analyze the effect of fuel mix model specification and the level of development on the presence and size of a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions the results indicate that fuel mix the specification for income and the level of economic development affect conclusions about whether there is a turning point in the relationship between economic activity and energy use and carbon emissions including fuel shares generally reduces the size of a turning point that is estimated from a panel that includes observations from both oecd and non oecd nations but this result varies according to the level of development for oecd nations there is limited support for a turning point in the relationship between income and per capita energy use and or carbon emissions for non oecd nations there is no turning point in the relationship between income and either energy use or carbon emissions instead the relationship is positive together the results indicate that forecasters and policy makers should not depend on a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use or carbon emissions to reduce either

relationship between forest resources and economic growth empirical evidence from china abstract natural resources especially forests are critical to china s sustainable development in recent years effective utilization of forest resources has become a significant concern in china in this study on the basis of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis the relationship between forest resources and economic growth is examined using panel data from 30 provinces in china for the period 2002 2015 and the generalized method of moments gmm approach to control for potential endogeneity the empirical results indicate that with continuous economic growth the timber output and area of afforestation would at first increase and then decrease after reaching the corresponding turning points given the considerable regional gap in economic and social development three regions of china were investigated to perform a more in depth analysis evidence observed for the country and the three regions suggests an ekc for forest resources these findings indicate positive effects of china s pursuit of a more balanced growth path where forest resources would be less consumed and more actively protected

do individual preferences explain the environmental kuznets curve abstract some economists maintain the optimistic view that individual preferences of rich people eventually lead to a virtuous circle relationship between rising income and environmental degradation in this article i review some of the models that establish a relationship between individual preferences and environmental quality these models provide a basis for discussion of the key role played by two factors individual preferences and technology they do not however capture the distributive conflicts that occur between different social groups in the process of defining environmental policy neither do they provide a good basis for distinguishing between environmental costs caused by the decisions of particular consumers and those which affect the same consumers this point is related to the various manners in which environmental costs are displaced displacement often occurs within a country for current costs and is even clearer and more relevant when costs are transferred across a great distance or to a remote future in such cases there are few incentives to reduce consumption or alter its composition displacement moreover can become a strategy pursued more or less consciously for maintaining high and rising levels of consumption without dealing with the associated environmental costs

environment and development is there a kuznets curve for co2 emissions this article re examines the relationship between growth in per capita income and environmental degradation using econometric techniques appropriate for smooth transition regressions with panel data this is a more intuitive and flexible methodology than the polynomial models widely used in the literature and it can reconcile some of the mixed results found previously the methodology is applied to carbon dioxide emissions from nonoecd countries over the period 1971 to 1997 although there is no evidence of environmental kuznets curve we find two regimes namely a low income regime where emissions accelerate with economic growth and a middle to high income regime associated with a deceleration in environmental degradation

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

an econometric study of co2 emissions energy consumption income and foreign trade in turkey abstract this study attempts to empirically examine the dynamic causal relationships between carbon emissions energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of turkey using the time series data for the period 1960 2005 this research tests the interrelationship between the variables using the bounds testing to cointegration procedure the bounds test results indicate that there exist two forms of long run relationships between the variables in the case of first form of long run relationship carbon emissions are determined by energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of second long run relationship income is determined by carbon emissions energy consumption and foreign trade an augmented form of granger causality analysis is conducted amongst the variables the long run relationship of co2 emissions energy consumption income and foreign trade equation is also checked for the parameter stability the empirical results suggest that income is the most significant variable in explaining the carbon emissions in turkey which is followed by energy consumption and foreign trade moreover there exists a stable carbon emissions function the results also provide important policy recommendations

economics of sustainability or the sustainability of economics different paradigms this article reviews different views of neo classical and ecological economics on the sustainability of economic growth and welfare neo classical economics concludes that due to substitution and technical progress consumption can be sustained even if production depends on a natural resource that is being depleted if production depends on an essential renewable resource there is a level of consumption that can be sustained forever pollution lowers the level of consumption that can be sustained if production depends on an exhaustible resource recycling of waste is insufficient for sustaining consumption unless 100 recycling is possible sustainable economic development is possible if the resource growth potential exceeds the sum of the discount rate minus the rate of exogenous technical progress and if resource productivity is sufficiently high in addition intial levels of environmental quality a composite of pollution and natural resources and man made capital influence the possibilities for sustainable economic development if the resource stock itself affects utility or if irreversibilities occur optimal consumption and extraction are lowered ecological economics states that substitution possibilities are restricted full recycling of waste is impossible and the limited influx of solar energy poses an additional constraint on the level of production that can be sustained since the functions of the environment production factor consumer good and waste sink are intertwined this life support function poses a restriction on economic growth as well in ecological economics development is viewed as an evolutionary process with continuous feedbacks between a changing economy and environment welfare is not merely the sum of discounted individual preferences but requires environmental compatibility and the explicit collective formulation of policies regarding the conservation of species ecosystems and natural resources

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

economic development and co2 emissions a nonparametric panel approach we examine the empirical relation between co2 emissions per capita and gdp per capita during the period 1960 1996 using a panel of 100 countries relying on the nonparametric poolability test of baltagi et al baltagi b h hidalgo j li q 1996 a nonparametric test for poolability using panel data journal of econometrics 75 345 367 we find evidence of structural stability of the relationship we then specify a nonparametric panel data model with country specific effects estimation results show that this relationship is upward sloping nonparametric specification tests do not reject monotonicity but do reject the polynomial functional form which leads to the environmental kuznets curve in several studies

co2 emission and economic growth in algeria abstract algeria is one of the most important co 2 emitters among developing countries and the third among african countries it pledged to curb carbon emissions by at least 7 by 2030 however complying with this target may be a difficult task without compromising economic growth the aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between co 2 emissions and economic growth in algeria taking into account energy use electricity consumption exports and imports the validity of the ekc hypothesis throughout the period from 1970 to 2010 is tested by using the autoregressive distributed lag model extended to introduce the break points results confirm the ekc for algeria nevertheless the turning point is reached for a very high gdp per capita value indicating that economic growth in algeria will continue to increase emissions results also indicate that an increase in energy use and electricity consumption increase co 2 emissions and that exports and imports affect them negatively and positively respectively therefore it is necessary to promote renewable energies and energy efficiency policies regulatory reforms are needed to facilitate foreign investments with which to carry out these policies likewise it may be appropriate to decrease subsides in energy prices to encourage energy efficiency

confronting the environmental kuznets curve t he environmental kuznets curve posits an inverted u relationship between pollution and economic development kuznets s name was apparently attached to the curve by grossman and krueger 1993 who noted its resemblance to kuznets s inverted u relationship between income inequality and development in the first stage of industrialization pollution in the environmental kuznets curve world grows rapidly because people are more interested in jobs and income than clean air and water communities are too poor to pay for abatement and environmental regulation is correspondingly weak the balance shifts as income rises leading industrial sectors become cleaner people value the environment more highly and regulatory institutions become more effective along the curve pollution levels off in the middle income range and then falls toward pre industrial levels in wealthy societies the environmental kuznets curve model has elicited conflicting reactions from researchers and policymakers applied econometricians have generally accepted the basic tenets of the model and focused on measuring its parameters their regressions typically fitted to cross sectional observations across countries or regions suggest that air and water pollution increase with development until per capita income reaches a range of 5000 to 8000 when income rises beyond that level pollution starts to decline as shown in the conventional ekc line in figure 1 in developing countries some policymakers have interpreted such results as conveying a message about priorities grow first then clean up numerous critics have challenged the conventional environmental kuznets curve both as a representation of what actually happens in the development process and as a policy prescription some pessimistic critics argue that crosssectional evidence for the environmental kuznets curve is nothing more than a

economic growth and energy consumption the energy environmental kuznets curve for latin america and the caribbean abstract this paper investigates the relationship between economic growth and energy consumption using the hypothesis postulated for the energy environmental kuznets curve which assumes an inverted u shape relationship between income and energy consumption panel data for 22 latin american and caribbean countries for the period 1990 2011 were used absolute energy consumption was chosen as an environmental pressure indicator because energy consumption is the major contributor of emissions pollutants the results obtained in the estimations show that the hypothesis postulated for the energy environmental kuznets curve is not supported for the region on the contrary the results show an exponential growth as gross value added grows also notable differences are shown between the analyzed economies

is carbon emission growth decoupled from economic growth in emerging countries new insights from labor and investment effects abstract as emerging countries are both major contributors to global carbon emissions growth and global economic growth the sharp contradiction between economy and carbon emissions has seriously hindered the sustainable development of emerging countries and is not conducive to the realization of global emission reduction targets this work takes brics brazil russia india china and south africa the representatives of emerging countries as an example to investigate the decoupling state between economic growth and carbon emissions and to uncover the driving factors behind these decoupling the results show i russia and south africa have experienced the longest time of strong decoupling indicating that the decoupling in these two countries is better than that in other countries china india and south africa was characterized by expansive coupling weak decoupling and expansive negative decoupling respectively ii the labor effect and investment effect have contributed to the carbon emissions growth in the brics and the reasons for the carbon emissions changes in russia india china and south africa are strongly consistent while brazil has a different performance iii the investment decoupling effect has hindered the decoupling process in russia south africa china and india but has promoted the decoupling process in brazil while the energy intensity effect is the driving force in the decoupling process in most countries finally the policy recommendations for the different decoupling status of each country were put forward

testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a bayesian robust structural model we address international convergence in carbon dioxide emissions per capita and per value added derived from emission inventories based on production and consumption patterns we propose a bayesian structural model that accounts for heteroscedasticity and endogeneity between emissions and economic growth and tests for the existence of group specific convergence via shrinkage priors we find evidence for country specific conditional convergence in all emission inventories implying a half life of 2 7 3 1 years for production based emissions and 3 6 4 7 years for consumption based emissions when testing for global convergence without allowing for individual specific convergence paths the half life of hbox co 2 per capita increases to 15 26 years whereas emission intensities show a half life of 44 45 years our results highlight the current incompatibility between emission targets and economic growth and the need for faster diffusion of green technologies moreover there is no evidence for specific convergence dynamics in the european union the oecd or the countries that are subject to binding emission constraints specified in the kyoto protocol the institutional frameworks implemented in industrialized countries did not induce faster convergence among developed economies

deceleration of economic growth the main course seeking sustainability in developed countries abstract deceleration of economic growth is a characteristic feature of developed countries percentage gross domestic product gdp growth rate in the old organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries has decreased approximately 2 3 times over the last 50 years and countries have managed successfully to adopt this trend the largest reduction of gdp growth rate was observed in countries such as japan where the biocapacity exceedance was the largest in addition the analysis of long term changes of gdp and self reported life satisfaction in developed countries supports easterlin s paradox indicating that richer people do not feel more satisfied with their lives however people from countries with higher per capita gdp feel more satisfied at the same time a statistically insignificant correlation was detected between gdp growth rate and life satisfaction supporting a conclusion that in the developed countries further economic growth does not increase people s well being this suggests that decelerating the rate of economic growth gradually approaching the zero growth steady state phase is the natural way towards sustainability and it does not contradict the well being objective in developed countries especially ones with high biocapacity exceedance

the demand for environmental quality and the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract household demand for better environmental quality is the key factor in the long term global applicability of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis we argue that for given consumer preferences the threshold income level at which the ekc turns downwards or the equilibrium income elasticity changes sign from positive to negative depends on the ability to spatially separate production and consumption we test our hypothesis by estimating the equilibrium income elasticities of five pollutants using 1990 data for the united states we find that the change in sign occurs at lower income levels for pollutants for which spatial separation is relatively easy as compared to pollutants for which spatial separation is difficult our results suggest that even high income households in the united states have not yet reached the income level at which their demand for better environmental quality is high enough to cause the income pollution relationship to turn downwards for all the pollutants that we analyzed

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

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

determinants of co2 emissions in a small open economy abstract the aim of the paper is to explore the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions for a small open and industrialized country austria we test whether an environmental kuznets curve relationship also holds for a single country rather than concentrating on panel or cross section data for a set of countries a cubic i e n shaped relationship between gdp and co2 emissions is found to fit the data most appropriately for the period 1960 1999 and a structural break is identified in the mid seventies due to the oil price shock furthermore two variables are additionally significant import shares reflecting the well known pollution haven hypothesis and the share of the tertiary service sector of total production gdp accounting for structural changes in the economy emission projections derived from this single country specification support the widely held opinion that significant policy changes are asked for when implementing the kyoto protocol in order to bring about a downturn in future carbon emissions

the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory part a concept causes and the co2 emissions case abstract the main purpose of this study is to capture the main features of the environmental kuznets curve ekc concept according to the ekc theory the process of economic growth is expected eventually to limit the environmental degradation created in the early stages of development the ekc concept leads many researchers from the early 1990s to assume that each economy should focus on its growth and any environmental problems will be eventually eliminated by the process of economic growth several studies attempt to test empirically the ekc hypothesis using data on many countries and examining various types of environmental degradation while other studies examine the underlying factors that may drive such a relationship this article reviews the evolution of the ekc concept and the possible causes of an ekc pattern like the distribution of income the international trade pollution haven hypothesis structural changes technical progress and improvements in energy efficiency institutions and governance and consumer preferences as co2 emissions are a pollutant with global effects several studies deal with the possible ekc pattern for co2 emissions and these studies are discussed separately the various critiques on the ekc concept are reviewed in the second article of this work

energy efficiency rebound effects and the environmental kuznets curve technological change is one factor used to justify the existence of an environmental kuznets curve and technological improvements have been argued to be a key factor in mitigating the impacts of economic growth on environmental quality in this paper we use a cge model of the scottish economy to consider the factors influencing the impacts of one form of technological change improvements in energy efficiency on absolute levels of co2 emissions on the carbon intensity of the economy co2 emissions relative to real gdp and the per capita ekc relationship these factors include the elasticity of substitution between energy and non energy inputs responses in the labour market and the structure of the economy our results demonstrate the key role played by the general equilibrium price elasticity of demand for energy and the relative influence of different factors on this parameter

the environmental kuznets curve for pm2 5 pollution in beijing tianjin hebei region of china a spatial panel data approach abstract the purpose of this study is to exam the existence of environmental kuznets curve ekc of pm2 5 pollution in the beijing tianjin hebei bth region of china as one of the most important economic growth poles in china bth region has long been suffering from air pollution especially pm2 5 pollution thus in this study we utilized satellite observations of pm2 5 pollution and panel data of 13 cities in bth region from 1998 to 2016 to investigate the relationship between economic growth and pm2 5 pollution after verifying the spatial effect of pm2 5 pollution by spatial statistical analysis the spatial econometric model spatial durbin model sdm was chosen over the non spatial model in the examination of ekc the results showed that 1 the relationship between economic growth and pm2 5 pollution presented a significant inverted u shaped pattern though bth region is still in the upward section there is a hope that it will cross the point and enter the downward section in the future 2 the turning points of ekc would happen later with spatial effect considered compared to the result of non spatial model 3 the turning point of ekc would not happen until the region enter the post industrial economy stage moreover though some of the cities in bth region have entered post industrial stage none of them has cross the turning point of ekc results of this study indicate a promising future in the control of pm2 5 pollution as well as provide suggestions to put more emphasis on regional cooperative governance in air pollution control for the policy makers

environment during growth accounting for governance and vulnerability summary the conventional environmental kuznets curve ekc model holds that pollution inevitably increases until societies reach middle income status because poor countries do not have the institutional capacity or political will to regulate polluters some policy makers and researchers have cited the ekc model when arguing that developing countries should grow first and clean up later however new evidence suggests that this argument is incorrect because it mistakenly assumes that strong environmental governance is not possible for poor countries this paper extends the ekc model to include a new measure of environmental governance as well as a detailed accounting of geographic vulnerability climate and terrain factors we find that these two factors can account for much of the observed variation in developing country air pollution levels

shaping the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions at the local level evidence from spatial econometric models the debate over the correlation between economic growth and environmental pollution has attracted a great deal of attention from academic researchers and policy makers in recent years there has been excessive use of spatial econometric models and too much emphasis on statistical procedures in empirical studies in this study we contribute to the existing literature by conducting a more rigorous analysis of the relationship between economic growth and hbox co 2 emissions in chinese cities using spatial durbin models our results show that hbox co 2 emissions increase monotonically in relation to economic growth at the city level and that the driving effects of economic growth are slightly smaller in central china than in eastern and western china in addition to economic growth industry s share of the economy is a major driver of hbox co 2 emissions while technological improvement measured by energy intensity per unit of gross domestic product gdp and the effectiveness of environmental governance flatten the shape of the environmental kuznets curve we provide evidence of local spillover effects of explanatory variables on hbox co 2 emissions economic competition as well as technological diffusion are found to exist in chinese cities in relation to hbox co 2 emissions we also find carbon leakage between cities only if the per capita gdp of a given city is less than 493 in 2010 constant dollars results hold when robustness checks are performed policy makers should carefully consider regional differences and the inherent spatial interactions between factors when formulating carbon reduction policies

decoupling analysis and environmental kuznets curve modelling of provincial level co2 emissions and economic growth in china a case study abstract guangdong is one of the most representative provinces of china in terms of reflecting how the provincial level co2 emissions dynamically evolve with economic development during the process of industrialisation and urbanisation the present study combines decoupling analysis with environmental kuznets curve ekc modelling to systematically explore the interactions between co2 emissions and economic growth in guangdong from the short to long terms aiming to provide the referential significance of low carbon development to other chinese provinces empirical results indicate that co2 economy interactions in guangdong dynamically changed with time performing an effect of expansive weak decoupling during 1995 2014 and having a potential to achieve a strong decoupling in the long run the decoupling states of various sectors and their contributions to the provincial overall decoupling differed greatly and varied by time and household and service sectors played increasingly important roles overall the decoupling effect of provincial co2 emissions is distinctly affected by the stage of industrialisation and urbanisation renewable energy utilisation as well as low carbon technical progress therefore promoting co2 economy decoupling at the provincial level should be specific to the feature and development reality of various provinces

trade the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental kuznets curve examining the linkages abstract this paper examines the extent to which the ekc inverted u relationship can be explained by trade and specifically the migration or displacement of dirty industries from the developed regions to the developing regions the pollution haven hypothesis phh using detailed data on north south trade flows for pollution intensive products the evidence for the phh is assessed emissions of 10 air and water pollutants are then estimated controlling for trade openness structural change and dirty north south trade flows evidence of pollution haven effects is found although such effects do not appear to be widespread and appear to be relatively small compared to the roles played other explanatory variables

carbon intensity and economic development 1962 1991 a brief exploration of the environmental kuznets curve the relationship between national carbon dioxide emissions intensity co2 emitted per unit of gross domestic product and level of economic development has changed from essentially linear in 1962 to strongly curvilinear in 1991 the inverted u curve reached statistical significance briefly in the early 1970s and increasingly since 1982 this is the result not of groups of countries passing through stages of development but of efficiency improvements in a small number of wealthy countries combined with worse performance in poor and middle income countries the curvilinear relation is deepening and is likely to persist due to constraints on poorer countries in the world economy

carbon dioxide emission and income a temporal analysis of cross country distributional patterns the existence of a cointegrating relationship between income and co2 emission for individual country groups suggests existence of a corresponding relationship between the inter country disparities in the levels of income and co2 emission this paper explores the relationship between the patterns of cross country distribution of income and co2 emission and temporal shifts in such a relationship this paper also examines how the mean level of per capita co2 emission and its distributional inequality are related to the corresponding mean income level and the distributional inequality of income the analysis is based on a cross country panel data set at the level of country group environmental quality demanded is treated as a private good and not as a public good as done in most other studies the technique of lorenz and specific concentration curve analysis are used as the basic analytical framework to argue that a measure of relative distributional inequality of income should be used as an explanatory variable in the environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship along with the mean income level in the empirical exercise johansen s cointegration analysis technique is used to explore existence of statistically significant cointegrating vector s relating mean level of emission and specific concentration ratio scr of emission to mean income level and lorenz ratio lr of income the empirical results confirm that the pattern of cross country income distribution has significant effect on the mean level of emission for all the country groups considered

spatial effects of economic performance on the carbon intensity of human well being the environmental kuznets curve in chinese provinces abstract this study analyzes the interdependent relationship between economic development and environmental and human well being in china we evaluate panel data of the carbon intensity of human well being ciwb to measure environmental sustainability and human well being for 30 chinese provinces from 1995 to 2016 we then employ a spatial model to test the environmental kuznets curve the ciwb is an important indicator that incorporates the environmental social and economic dimensions of sustainability the coefficients of gdp squared gdp and cubic gdp are 1 043 0 123 and 0 0045 respectively indicating that the relationship between ciwb and economic growth is an inverted n shape in other words as gdp increases from low to high the ciwb first decreases then increases for a long period until it reaches a turning point and declines thereafter gdp per capita at the two turning points are 850 yuan and 110 000 yuan respectively in the long run economic growth is expected to have a positive effect on sustainable development however currently environmental policies are needed to offset unintended environmental harm analysis of spatial evolution and multiplier spatial effects show that spatial disparity and clustering exist simultaneously this suggests that overall planning for the big picture and cooperative development between adjacent provinces could help to handle regional environmental problems

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

economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions abstract recent empirical research has examined the relationship between certain indicators of environmental degradation and income concluding that in some cases an inverted u shaped relationship which has been called an environmental kuznets curve ekc exists between these variables unfortunately this inverted u shaped relationship does not hold for greenhouse gas emissions one explanation of the absence of ekc like behavior in greenhouse gas emissions is that greenhouse gases are special pollutants that create global not local disutility but the international nature of global warming is not the only reason that prevents de linking greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth the intergenerational nature of the negative impact of greenhouse gas emissions may have also been an important factor preventing the implementation of greenhouse gas abatement measures in the past in this paper we explore the effect that the presence of intergenerational spillovers has on the emissions income relationship we use a numerically calibrated overlapping generations model of climate economy interactions we conclude that 1 the intertemporal responsibility of the regulatory agency 2 the institutional capacity to make intergenerational transfers and 3 the presence of intergenerationally lagged impact of emissions constitute important determinants of the relationship between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions

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

economic development and pollution emissions in singapore evidence in support of the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis and its implications for regional sustainability abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesizes an inverted u shaped relationship between indicators of environmental quality and economic growth the possible existence of an ekc has in the past been tested using relatively short time series of data and presumed indicators of environmental quality that can be considered sub optimal this paper addresses these shortcomings in investigating the extent to which economic growth and environmental quality in singapore the most economically developed country in southeast asia sea accord with an ekc a heavy metal chromium cr is here used as an indicator of environmental quality this is because levels of a heavy metal with well known risks to health are likely to have a much stronger relationship with perceptions of local environmental quality than for example co2 emissions and therefore likely to elicit a more rapid response from legislators a national emission inventory nei analysis quantified atmospheric cr emissions from 1900 to 2017 levels of cr emissions increased rapidly during the 1960s 1980s a period characterized by industrialization in singapore that commenced around the time of its independence returning to negligible levels by the 1990s as the country entered the current period of de industrialization and economic modernization results of the nei for the period post 1950 when an unbroken time series of reliable and annually comparable economic data first become available were further subjected to econometric analysis which confirmed the ekc hypothesis with regard to cr emissions in singapore results also suggest that the post industrial development of singapore may have contributed to creating pollution havens in the region together the findings have important implications for regional sustainable development and the governance of pollution emissions including those that potentially have transboundary effects more generally

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

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

the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory part b critical issues according to the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory the process of economic growth is expected to limit the environmental degradation created in the early stages of development the first article of this study reviews the empirical studies examining various factors other than income that may lead to an ekc pattern the current article reviews in the first part the major critiques on the ekc speculation which relate to the following issues the normal distribution of world income the feedback from environmental degradation to economic growth the characteristics of the pollutant in question various econometric issues the evolution of consumption when income rises and the assumption about a common developmental pattern in all countries the second part discusses additional matters reported indirectly in the literature and or must be further examined there are doubts whether the gdp series captures the transition of production to the three productive sectors in empirical estimations and whether services are less polluting compared to industry activities finally the original kuznets theory which laid the groundwork for the ekc concept does not seem to solve income inequality problems

the heterogeneous effect of democracy political globalization and urbanization on pm2 5 concentrations in g20 countries evidence from panel quantile regression abstract pm2 5 emissions have serious adverse impacts on health and impede transport activities especially air and highway consequently policymakers and economists have focused on this issue the primary objective of this study is to investigate the effect of democracy political globalization and urbanization on pm2 5 concentrations within g20 countries ecological modernization theory is used to gain the best understanding of the impact of these driving forces on pm2 5 concentrations and obtains an analytical framework the method utilized is the panel quantile regression which takes into account the unobserved individual and distributional heterogeneity the results demonstrate that first the direct effect of democracy on pm2 5 concentrations is significantly positive in countries with higher emissions and has no impact on lower emission countries second the direct effect of political globalization on pm2 5 concentrations is significantly positive and especially greater in extremely low and high emission countries third persuasive evidence proves the existence of an environmental kuznets curve between urbanization and pm2 5 concentrations additionally this paper further assesses the direct and indirect influence mechanisms of democracy and political globalization on pm2 5 concentrations across pollution levels both have a positive negative indirect effect on pm2 5 concentrations in countries with higher lower emissions through its effect on gdp per capita the total effect appears positive suggesting that the increase in democracy and political globalization degrade environmental quality these results provide policymakers with critical policy recommendations that contribute to the reduction of pm2 5 concentrations and ensure sustainable economic development in the g20 countries

the co2 emissions income nexus evidence from rich countries the paper attempts to test the environment kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for 36 high income countries for the period 1980 2005 the test is based on the suggestion of narayan and narayan 2010 various panel data unit root and co integration tests are applied carbon dioxide co2 emissions and gdp series are integrated of order one and co integrated especially after controlling for cross sectional dependence additionally the blundell bond system generalised methods of moments gmm is employed to conduct a panel causality test in a vector error correction mechanism vecm setting unidirectional causality running from real per capita gdp to per capita co2 emissions is uncovered in both the short run and the long run the empirical analysis based on individual countries provides evidence of an ekc for greece malta oman portugal and the united kingdom however it can be observed that for the whole panel a 1 increase in gdp generates an increase of 0 68 in co2 emissions in the short run and 0 22 in the long run the lower long run income elasticity does not provide evidence of an ekc but does indicate that over time co2 emissions are stabilising in the rich countries

environment kuznets curve for co2 emissions a cointegration analysis for china abstract this study examines the long run relationship between carbon emissions and energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of china by employing time series data of 1975 2005 in particular the study aims at testing whether environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between co 2 emissions and per capita real gdp holds in the long run or not auto regressive distributed lag ardl methodology is employed for empirical analysis a quadratic relationship between income and co 2 emission has been found for the sample period supporting ekc relationship the results of granger causality tests indicate one way causality runs through economic growth to co 2 emissions the results of this study also indicate that the carbon emissions are mainly determined by income and energy consumption in the long run trade has a positive but statistically insignificant impact on co 2 emissions

limits to growth and sustainable development grappling with ecological realities abstract the paper has three main sections the first discusses the limits to growth debate of the 1970s identifying concern with three potential kinds of limits ecological limits to the physical scale of economic activity limits to the economic welfare to be derived from growth of economic activity and social limits to economic growth the second section explores the same issues through the sustainable development literature of the late 1980s and the 1990s to date the principal change over the 20 years concerned a period also framed by the stockholm environment conference and unced is far greater acceptance of the existence of threatening environmental damage and the need for active policy to address it no consensus has yet emerged however on the relationship between economic growth and welfare or ecological or social sustainability the third section indicates the scale of the task if global economic growth is to be reconciled with ecological sustainability and advocates a strategy for sustainability that principally involves differentiating between north and south and forging new economic relations between them

carbon emission energy consumption and intermediate goods trade a regional study of east asia abstract using country level panel data from east asia over the period 1998 2011 this paper examines the implications of international production fragmentation induced intermediate goods trade on the link between energy consumption and carbon pollution the paper focuses on the interaction effect between energy consumption and trade in intermediate goods on carbon emission the empirical results presented suggest that international trade in intermediate goods decreases the positive impact on carbon emission of energy consumption when compared with the trade in final goods intermediate goods trade contributes to a greater decrease in carbon pollution resulting from energy consumption these results confirm that the link between energy consumption and carbon pollution in east asia is significantly affected by international production fragmentation induced trade in intermediate goods the results presented in this paper have some important policy implications

the income inequality and carbon emissions trade off revisited abstract this paper investigates the marginal effect of income inequality on carbon emissions per capita we use a panel consisting of 68 countries over a 50 year period from 1961 to 2010 we report estimates that support the hypothesis that there is a trade off between carbon emissions per capita and income inequality this trade off is not homogeneous across countries and depends upon the level of development measured by income per capita using panel smooth transition regression we find that this relationship is negative for countries with low to moderate income per capita but becomes slightly positive after passing a threshold located around fifteen thousand 2011 us dollars moreover the inequality elasticity of emissions per capita is comparable in magnitude to its income elasticity therefore both inequality and income levels are crucial to define policies to reduce carbon emissions this implies a challenge to policymakers who pursue to reduce both income inequality and carbon emissions

macro economic and development indexes and iso14001 certificates a cross national analysis abstract environmental management systems emss implemented according to the iso14001 standard have been examined by many authors especially focussing on its impact at the firm level however only a few papers have investigated the impact of iso14001 from a country perspective this paper aims to contribute to bridging this gap the aim is to study the relation between iso14001 growth and the trend in selected macro economic and development indexes by applying the growth mixture model to a panel of 73 countries for the period 1999 2012 we assess the following hypotheses a the increase in numbers of iso14001 certifications corresponds to an increase in economic indexes b the increase in iso14001 corresponds to an increase in development indexes c the trends of iso14001 adoption and macro economic indexes confirm the relationship described by the environmental kuznets curve the results confirm a positive relation among the trends of some variables such as iso14001 and gross domestic product gdp iso14001 and industry value added while no significant results were found when observing the relation between iso14001 and the selected development indexes in addition using the industry added value as the variable to measure economic development our results support the theory of the environmental kuznets curve

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

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

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

richer and cleaner a study on carbon dioxide emissions in developing countries abstract the climate change debate has drawn attention to the problem of greenhouse gases emissions into the atmosphere one of the most important issues in the policy debate is the role that should be played by developing countries in joining the commitment of developed countries to reduce ghg emissions and particularly co2 emissions this debate calls into play the relationship between energy consumption co2 emissions and economic development in this paper we use a panel data model for 110 world countries to estimate the relationship between co2 emissions and gdp and to produce emission forecast the paper contains three major results i the empirical relationship between carbon dioxide and income is well described by non linear gamma and weibull specifications as opposed to more usual linear and log linear functional forms ii our single equation reduced form model is comparable in terms of forecasted emissions with other more complex less data driven models iii despite the decreasing marginal propensity to pollute our forecasts show that future global emissions will rise the average world growth of co2 emissions between 2000 and 2020 is about 2 2 yr while that of non annex 1 countries is posted at 3 3 yr

do countries influence neighbouring pollution a spatial analysis of the ekc for co2 emissions abstract by considering spatial relationships this study aims to analyse to what extent per capita co2 emissions are determined by renewable energy consumption the share of the services sector in gdp energy intensity and real per capita income a panel data set composed of 173 countries over the 1990 2014 period is used to estimate an environmental kuznets curve ekc augmented by neighbouring per capita income and energy intensity both standard and spatial forms are estimated for seven different sets of countries to assess the robustness of the results finally several forecasts are performed to verify global sustainability and to provide some policy suggestions for the period 2015 2100 the empirical results indicate that i most areas support the standard ekc ii there seems to be an inverted u shaped relationship between neighbouring per capita income and national per capita emissions in europe asia and the world as a whole iii neighbouring energy intensity increases national per capita emissions and iv forecasts show that economic growth will accelerate climate change however a steady annual growth in renewable energy consumption and a steady decrease in energy intensity both close to 2 5 may guarantee environmental sustainability prior to 2100

a further inquiry into the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental kuznets curve abstract empirical research on the relationship between economic growth and its impact on the environment often tests the environmental kuznets curve ekc a hypothesis that rising national output leads to increases in pollution emissions until an economy reaches a certain size and decreases thereafter this paper addresses a branch of ekc literature focused on the role international trade plays in shaping this relationship in particular we test the pollution haven hypothesis which posits that emission reductions observed in developed nations are partly the result of shifting dirty production to developing nations with lax environmental standards we estimate ekcs for seven oft studied pollutants and find little evidence that pollution havens play a significant role in shaping the ekc we also find that confidence intervals around ekc turning points are very wide often including values well above the range of the data this leads us to be skeptical of the optimistic view that economic growth naturally leads to improvements in environmental quality

the long run decoupling of emissions and output evidence from the largest emitters abstract for the world s 20 largest emitters we use a simple trend cycle decomposition to provide evidence of decoupling between greenhouse gas emissions and output in richer nations particularly in european countries but not yet in emerging markets if consumption based emissions measures that account for countries net emissions embodied in cross border trade are used the evidence for decoupling in the richer economies gets weaker countries with underlying policy frameworks more supportive of renewable energy and climate change mitigation efforts tend to show greater decoupling between trend emissions and trend gdp and for both production and consumption based emissions the relationship between trend emissions and trend gdp has also become much weaker in the last two decades than in preceding decades

an ekc pattern in historical perspective carbon dioxide emissions technology fuel prices and growth in sweden 1870 1997 the environmental kuznets curve ekc has been subject to research and debate since the early 1990s this articleexamines the inverted u trajectory of swedish co2 emissions during an extended time

land use regulation and the intensive margin of housing supply abstract this paper proposes a method for estimating the extent to which density regulation causes the actual housing supply per land unit to deviate from the unconstrained amount i e the impact of density regulation on the intensive margin of housing supply to overcome the challenges that both the housing supply per land unit which is a combination of quantity and quality measures and its unconstrained amount are unobserved to the researchers we extend the framework of epple gordon and sieg 2010 by explicitly allowing substitution between the quantity and quality inputs in the housing production function and by imposing a regulatory upper limit on the use of the quantity input we show theoretically that the land share of the housing value can be used as a proxy for the stringency of the density regulation we apply this method in our investigation of the stringency of floor to area ratio far regulation in urban china at the land parcel level and find that the regulation imposes a significant binding constraint on the housing supply per land unit we then explore the spatial and temporal variations of far regulation stringency we also find that the far regulation stringency intensified the housing price appreciation that occurred during the economic stimulus period after 2008

renewable energy carbon emission and economic growth a revised environmental kuznets curve perspective abstract renewable energy plays an important role in reducing global carbon co2 emission this paper builds a rer renewable energy consumption rate index to represent the energy structure of a country and proposes a u shaped rkc renewable energy kuznets curve hypothesis between rer and economic growth we also examine the dynamic relationship between rer and the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis using two panel data sets of 17 major developing and developed countries as well as six geo economic regions of the world during 1990 2014 panel co integration tests indicate that a long run relationship exists among economic growth rer and carbon emission we employ the fully modified ordinary least squares fmols and the dynamic ordinary least squares dols techniques to estimate the co integration coefficients of the panels and individual countries regions respectively the results verify both the ekc and rkc hypotheses indicating that a 10 rise in rer would to a 1 6 carbon emission reduction it is also found that the rkc turning points of individual countries and the entire samples in general take place before the turning points of the respective ekcs it suggests that promoting renewable energy consumption to make rkc cross its turning point earlier can accelerate ekc to reach its turning point more quickly this finding has important policy implications with respect to the development and utilization of renewable energy and environmental protection

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 relationship between energy consumption energy prices and economic growth time series evidence from asian developing countries this paper estimates the causal relationships between energy consumption and income for india indonesia the philippines and thailand using cointegration and error correction modelling techniques the results indicate that in the short run unidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for india and indonesia while bidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for thailand and the philippines in the case of thailand and the philippines energy income and prices are mutually causal the study results do not support the view that energy and income are neutral with respect to each other with the exception of indonesia and india where neutrality is observed in the short run c 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classifications c22 q43 q48

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

drivers of industrial and non industrial greenhouse gas emissions abstract though there has been extensive analysis of the drivers of aggregate carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production there has been much less analysis of the drivers of greenhouse gases in general and especially of aggregate emissions of greenhouse gases from agriculture forestry and other land uses which we call non industrial emissions in this paper we statistically analyze the relationship between both industrial and non industrial greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth and other potential drivers for 129 countries over the period from 1971 to 2010 our analysis combines the three main approaches in the literature into a single framework for investigating the evolution of emissions and income we find that economic growth is a driver of both industrial and non industrial emissions though economic growth has twice the effect on industrial emissions the time effect is negative for both sources of emissions though this effect is larger for non industrial emissions there is also convergence in emissions intensity for both types of emissions but given these other effects there is no evidence for an environmental kuznets curve

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

what causes pm2 5 pollution cross economy empirical analysis from socioeconomic perspective abstract is it true that as the mainstream intuition asserts urbanization and industrialization are the two main socioeconomic drivers of pm2 5 how do the two trends affect pm2 5 emission this paper quantitatively analyzes the socioeconomic drivers of pm2 5 through assessment on stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stripat based on the panel data of 79 developing countries over 2001 2010 the average levels of pm2 5 pollution are calculated using remote sensing data overcoming the difficulties that developing countries are in lack of pm2 5 monitors and that point data cannot reflect the overall level of pm2 5 pollution on a large scale squared terms of income and urbanization and their cross term are included in the regression models respectively to analyze the possible heterogeneous impacts on pm2 5 emissions in different development stages the results show that income urbanization and service sector have significant impact on pm2 5 pollution income has a positive effect on pm2 5 all the time but the effect decreases as the level of urbanization or income goes up an inverted u relationship exists between urbanization and pm2 5 in which pm2 5 pollution positively correlates with a low level of income or urbanization but negatively at a high level policy recommendations from the perspective of macro level social and economic regulation are provided for developing economies to reduce pm2 5 pollution

assessing the role of institutions in limiting the environmental externalities of economic growth emissions of pollutants tend to be procyclical as they generally increase with economic growth however as government policy has a role to play in the mitigation of the environmental consequences of economic activity the quality of institutions may influence the procyclicality of pollution and reduce the environmental cost of economic growth based on the assumption that changes in emissions are stronger at earlier stages of development we develop a non linear framework and confirm first the presence of income related threshold effects in the relationship between pollution co 2 and greenhouse gas emissions and growth for a panel of 142 countries over a period spanning from 1960 to 2017 we also find that institutional quality influences this relationship as the quality of institutions lowers the value of the threshold and the degree of procyclicality of emissions these results bring therefore evidence that higher institutional quality can attenuate the environmental externalities of economic growth

economic growth and the diffusion of clean technologies explaining environmental kuznets curves the paper provides a theoretical explanation for the inverted u shaped relation between pollution and income often found in empirical research environmental kuznets curve we model the transition in the pollution pattern as a change in general purpose technologies and investigate how it interferes with economic growth driven by quality improvements we provide an analytical foundation for the claim that the rise and decline of pollution can be explained by endogenous innovations policy induced technology shifts and intrasectoral changes once environmental degradation becomes too severe regulation is introduced by which society forces the economy to make a transition to cleaner production

preferences technology and the environment understanding the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis we derive a simple expression for the income pollution path using the standard static model of the environmental kuznets curve ekc this expression makes it straightforward to identify the general characteristics of utility and pollution functions that lead to such a curve we show that suitable preferences can always lead to an ekc while there is no technology that yields an ekc for all types of preferences and we derive a sufficient condition for technology that leads to an ekc for almost all types of preferences our results hold for a model with multiple goods with different pollution intensities and for a production economy with nonconstant relative price of consumption and environmental effort we derive our results without assuming specific functional forms and we encompass several other models as special cases