pollution without subsidy what is the environmental performance index overlooking abstract agriculture is heavily subsidized in most organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries and environmental externalities can occur due to pollution caused by protectionist policies this study examines the structure of agricultural protection in oecd countries from a chronological and comparative perspective in addition the policy environment interaction is scrutinized to better explain the environmental implications of agricultural policies in the era of globalization this paper critically evaluates the environmental performance index and recommends that this index includes polluting inputs in future calculations

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

questioning the empirical basis of the environmental kuznets curve for co2 new evidence from a panel stationarity test robust to multiple breaks and cross dependence abstract this paper investigates the time series properties of per capita co2 emissions and per capita gdp levels for a sample of 86 countries over the period 1960 2000 for that purpose we employ a state of the art panel stationarity test which incorporates multiple shifts in level and slope thereby controlling for cross sectional dependence through bootstrap methods our analysis renders clear cut evidence that per capita gdp levels are nonstationary for the world as a whole while per capita co2 is found to be regime wise trend stationary the analysis of country groups shows that for africa and asia per capita co2 is best described as nonstationary while per capita gdp appears stationary around a broken trend in addition we find evidence of regime wise trend stationarity in both variables for the country groups consisting of america europe and oceania the results of our analysis carry important implications for the statistical modelling of the environmental kuznets curve for co2 since the differing order of integration in both variables for the world as a whole and for africa and asia calls into question the validity of panel cointegration techniques which assume that both variables are nonstationary and cointegrated with one another cointegration techniques would not be appropriate either for the case of america europe and oceania which are characterised by per capita gdp and co2 emissions being stationary around a broken trend similar conclusions are reached when we analyse country groups based on levels of development failure to properly characterise the time series properties of the data by not controlling for an unknown number of structural breaks and for cross sectional dependence could be responsible for the fragility and lack of robustness surrounding the estimation of environmental kuznets curves

a dynamic general equilibrium analysis of deviations from the laws of one price abstract using disaggregated west german prices this study documents movements in relative export and producer prices and in relative import and producer prices which are variable and highly autocorrelated this suggests the presence of time varying persistent deviations from the laws of one price perfect competition monopoly and monopolistic competition with constant mark up pricing are inconsistent with the variability in relative export and producer prices furthermore cournot oligopoly is inconsistent with the variability in relative import and producer prices a dynamic general equilibrium model with differentiated oligopolistic competition and strategic pricing is shown to generate variable and persistent movements in both measures of relative prices

linking namea and input output for consumption vs production perspective analyses evidence on emission efficiency and aggregation biases using the italian and spanish environmental accounts we integrate input output and namea tables for spain and italy in 1995 2000 and 2005 in order to address the hot policy issue of sustainable consumption and production a comparison of production and consumption perspectives may have relevant policy implications we deal with the domestic technology assumption and primarily the aggregation bias that may result when calculating indirect emission using different sector aggregations in the analyses e g 16 30 50 extended input output analysis provides analyses of the emissions embodied in domestic consumption and domestic production by considering the structure of intermediate inputs and environmental efficiency in each production sector our empirical findings show that different sectoral aggregation significantly biases the amount of emissions for the consumption perspective though differently in the two countries italy surprisingly show consumption production ratios around or lower than one but in line with some major work at eu level our results thus suggest that special attention must be paid when interpreting the ee ioa of country estimated amounts of embodied emissions both in domestic final demand and those directly associated with the production sectors when the sectoral aggregation level has a low definition as considered in some recent similar studies

is environmental policy a secondary trade barrier an empirical analysis should international trade agreements be extended to include negotiations over environmental policy the answer depends on whether countries distort levels of environmental regulations as a secondary means of providing protection to domestic industries our results suggest that they do previous studies of this relationship have treated the level of environmental regulation as exogenous and found a negligible correlation between environmental regulation and trade flows in contrast we find that when the level of environmental regulation is modelled as an endogenous variable its estimated effect on trade flows is significantly higher than previously reported jel classification fl f14 f18 est ce que la politique environnementale est une barriere commerciale secondaire une analyse empirique est ce que les accords commerciaux internationaux doivent etre etendus pour couvrir la politique environnementale la reponse depend du degre de distorsion que les pays introduisent dans leur politique environnementale pour proteger leurs industries nationales nos resultats suggerent que cet impact est important des etudes anterieures de cette relation ont traite la politique environnementale comme exogene et ont montre qu il existe une co relation negligeable entre politique envir onnementale et flux commerciaux au contraire nous revelons que quand la politique environnementale est consideree comme variable endoge ne son effet sur les flux com merciaux est plus eleve de maniere significative que ce qu on a note anterieurement

does trade liberalization lead to environmental burden shifting in the global economy abstract does trade liberalization lead to the outsourcing of pollution from industrialized countries to developing countries according to the pollution haven hypothesis international trade is a key channel through which richer countries can geographically dissociate consumption from production of goods we examine whether and how trade liberalization via preferential trade agreements ptas facilitates the shifting of consumption based environmental burdens from developed countries via imports to poorer countries via exports based on panel data analysis of 183 countries from 1987 to 2013 we find partial evidence for trade induced environmental burden shifting while we observe an increase in footprint exports from low income countries when these countries liberalize trade this is not matched by an increase in footprint imports of high income countries our results also show that environmental clauses in ptas and participation in international environmental agreements do not influence the relationship between trade liberalization and ecological footprint movements however domestic institutions have a significant effect on the trade induced distribution of environmental burdens these findings suggest that ptas as a policy tool for trade liberalization are per se unlikely to induce exploitation of low income countries natural capital by wealthier nations however they suggest that political incentives inherent to democratic institutions encourage environmental burden shifting

a reexamination of the role of income for the trade and environment debate recent work on the relationship between international trade and the environment has found small but negative effects of increased openness on measures of pollution for the average country on a panel of 128 countries it is shown that like previous studies the trade intensity effect is negative and significant for the average country for emissions of four localized pollutants so2 nox co and vocs however trade intensity effects are not uniform across countries of different income levels in fact a strong non monotonicity exists in trade intensity elasticities it is found that countries with relative world incomes less than 0 5 or greater than 2 5 tend to have positive trade intensity elasticities while countries with relative world incomes between 0 5 and 2 5 tend to have negative trade intensity elasticities the results imply that both factor abundance and pollution haven effects may be at work but that the dominance of one effect over the other depends on a country s level of development

environmental performance innovation and spillovers evidence from a regional namea abstract the achievement of positive environmental performance ep at national level could strongly depend on differences in regional features namely productive specialization regulation stringency and innovation capabilities of both public institutions and the private business sector we present empirical evidence for a newly released namea available for the 20 italian regions in order to demonstrate the role played by sector innovation regional spillovers and environmental policies the italian north south divide regarding industrial development and productive specialization patterns seems to affect regional ep nonetheless such a pattern presents some interesting differences revealing a more heterogeneous distribution of emissions which may reflect the role of other driving forces in particular agglomerative effects seem to play a major role and the ep of neighboring regions influences the regional internal ep this means that together with the spatial concentration of specific sectors into restricted areas there is also some convergence in the adoption of cleaner or dirtier production process techniques finally interregional technological spillovers are more important than sector internal innovation for improving ep revealing that accounting for spatial features and linking ecological economics to regional economics are crucial in understanding the key drivers of ep

reexamining the empirical evidence for an environmental kuznets curve this paper uses an updated and revised panel data set on ambient air pollution in cities worldwide to examine the robustness of the evidence for the existence of an inverted u shaped relationship between national income and pollution we test the sensitivity of the pollution income relationship to functional forms to additional covariates and to changes in the nations cities and years sampled we find that the results are highly sensitive to these changes and conclude that there is little empirical support for an inverted u shaped relationship between several important air pollutants and national income in these data

consumption based carbon emissions and trade nexus evidence from nine oil exporting countries abstract the relationship between international trade and carbon emissions has been studied extensively nonetheless consumption based carbon emissions which is adjusted for international trade have not been studied this study is an attempt to address the gap by using consumption based carbon emissions which is adjusted for trade in case of oil exporting countries the effect of international trade is analyzed by treating exports and imports separately from 1990 to 2018 the long run impact of all variables i e exports imports and gross domestic product gdp is higher than the short run coefficients the empirical evidence both in the long run and short run confirms the negative effect of exports on consumption based carbon emissions furthermore gross domestic product gdp and imports have a positive and statistically significant impact on consumption based carbon emissions both in the short run and long run policies related to consumption based carbon emissions and international trade shall realize the effect of government policies to absorb it fully by taking approximately two years

economic growth and environmental degradation the environmental kuznets curve and sustainable development abstract in this paper we critically examine the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc it proposes that there is an inverted u shape relation between environmental degradation and income per capita so that eventually growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity the concept is dependent on a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the quality of the environment to production possibilities and in which trade has a neutral effect on environmental degradation the actual violation of these assumptions gives rise to fundamental problems in estimating the parameters of an ekc the paper identifies other econometric problems with estimates of the ekc and reviews a number of empirical studies the inference from some such ekc estimates that further development will reduce environmental degradation is dependent on the assumption that world per capita income is normally distributed when in fact median income is far below mean income we carry out simulations combining ekc estimates from the literature with world bank forecasts for economic growth for individual countries aggregating over countries to derive the global impact within the horizon of the bank s forecast 2025 global emissions of so 2 continue to increase forest loss stabilizes before the end of the period but tropical deforestation continues at a constant rate throughout the period

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

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

transboundary effects of environmental policy markets and emission leakages abstract one of many explanations for environmental kuznets curves for rich countries can be that dirty production is relocated to economies with laxer abatement regimes if this is caused by national abatement policies environmental stresses are transferred to other countries further the economic costs of national abatement policies can be shared with foreigners to some extent both through a lower demand for imports and losses of market shares for foreign competitors that produce cleaner products we quantify effects internally and abroad of a growth induced unilateral carbon tax policy in a rich open economy we find that the environmental benefits fall and the economic costs rise when a global rather than a national perspective is employed

the dynamics of foreign direct investments in land and pollution accumulation following the recent increase of foreign direct investments in land this paper studies their possible effects on the development of a local economy to this aim we use a two sector model external and local with heterogeneous agents external investors and local land owners we assume that both sectors are negatively affected by pollution but only the external sector is polluting the local government can tax the external sector s production activities to finance environmental defensive expenditures we first examine the equilibria that emerge in the model from the dynamics of pollution and physical capital and then investigate the conditions for the coexistence of the two sectors and the impact of the external sector on the revenues of the local population using numerical simulations we show that a revenue increasing path may occur only if the pollution tax is high enough and the impact of the external sector on pollution is low enough otherwise foreign direct investments may end up impoverishing the local population

investigating environmental kuznets curve in china aggregation bias and policy implications abstract aggregation bias may lead to a wrongly estimated environmental kuznets curve ekc and misguide the policy makers this paper aims to test the existence of aggregation bias in the environmental kuznets curve with the sulfur dioxide so2 emission the empirical methods robust to cross sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity reveals that the estimation of so2 ekc in china suffers from aggregation bias the results with the disaggregate data cannot support the ekc estimated at the aggregate level the finding of aggregation bias has several policy implications first the government should not be misled by the false relationship between the pollutant emission and the real gdp per capita at the aggregate level second the local governments should play more important roles in making environmental protection policies since the more disaggregate data can mitigate the aggregation bias to provide enough incentives to the local government the chinese national government should align the interests of the local governments with those of the national government on the other hand the findings indicate that china can stick to the policy of encouraging foreign direct investment openness and financial development since they have not influenced the so2 emission in china

participation in gvcs and co2 emissions abstract this paper attempts to explore the determinants of co2 emissions in the context of international trade while there exist studies that examine the roles of horizontal specialization and inter industry trade transactions little previous research attention has been paid to the roles of vertical specialization and intra industry trade transactions in affecting co2 emissions to fill the knowledge gap this study uses the panel data of 62 countries and regions for the period of 1995 2011 to estimate the effect of participation in global value chains gvcs on per capita co2 emissions major findings include 1 the relationship between participation degrees in gvcs and per capita co2 emissions is found to be inversely u shaped at the aggregate economy level and for most individual industries 2 per capita gdp shows an n shaped relationship with per capita co2 emissions and 3 benign drivers of co2 emissions include r d energy conservation and population control it can be concluded that countries with low gdp or gvc participation degrees are expected to experience worsening co2 emissions in the short or even medium run this trend however can be moderated or even reversed with more r d investments

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

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

foreign direct investments environmental externalities and capital segmentation in a rural economy this paper examines the possible effects of external investment inflows on the development of local rural economies taking into account two recurrent features of many developing countries capital market segmentation and environmental externalities to investigate this issue we examine a model with two sectors the local sector and the external sector physical capital accumulation in the latter sector is driven by foreign direct investments while in the former sector it follows a solow type accumulation mechanism we assume that the production activity of the external sector damages the environment while the local sector relies on natural resources in this context we give the conditions under which capital inflows can promote diversification of host economy while improving welfare of local populations if these conditions are not satisfied external investments fuel a welfare reducing process for the local community and a self enforcing growth of the external sector at the expense of the local one

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

dirty industries patterns of change in industrial countries this article concerns itself with the environmental role of heavily polluting industries since 1970 analysing its development in 11 basic industries as well as electricity production and road transport in 32 industrial countries it argues for a green industrial policy demonstrating that other mitigations of environmental pressure in industrial countries end of pipe treatment relocation to the third world structural change in the industrial sector and even environmentally oriented modernization have so far been unable to solve the problems of dirty industries although some approaches have shown some promise

valuing morbidity an integration of the willingness to pay and health status index literatures placing dollar values on human health has long been a controversial aspect of policy analysis and remains difficult given the relatively small number of morbidity valuation studies available by combining both the economic and health literature this paper offers an alternative approach to morbidity valuation and provides estimates for a wide range of short term health conditions

air pollution and dirty industries how and why does the composition of manufacturing output change with economic development this paper examines the impact on air pollution ofchanges in the composition of manufacturing output indeveloped and developing countries pollutionemissions from manufacturing output are estimated ina manner which holds constant the effect of technologyand regulations allowing the impact of compositional changes alone on pollution to beestimated the paper has three main findings 1 theinverted u estimated between per capita income and thepollution intensity of gdp arises due to both thecomposition of manufacturing becoming cleaner and theshare of manufacturing output in gdp falling compositional changes alone are not responsible forthe inverted u between per capita income and percapita emissions 2 changes to the composition ofmanufacturing output are consistent with the pollutionhaven hypothesis however there is clear evidence thatrising per capita incomes are associated with afalling income elasticity of demand for dirty products this fact may explain the compositionalchanges that occur with development 3 in additionto the income elasticity effect the analysis suggeststhat land prices and to a lesser extent the prices oflabour and capital determine the proportion of dirtyindustry within a country s manufacturing sector

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

jurisdiction shopping and foreign location choice the role of market and nonmarket experience in the european solar energy industry several countries provide policy support to specific sectors in order to facilitate industry transitions while industry support policies stimulate the growth of their target sectors little is known about how such policies engender heterogeneous international strategies in this article we investigate how industry support policies influence foreign location choices we argue that firms engage in jurisdiction shopping choosing to invest in countries with more generous policy support but that this tendency varies markedly across firms specifically we suggest that firms nonmarket experience exacerbates the effect of policy support on location choice whereas market experience has less of an impact further we propose that some firms view generous policies more skeptically than others depending on the nature of their nonmarket experience we test and find support for our predictions using a longitudinal dataset of foreign investments of firms entering the solar energy industry in the european union our findings indicate that supportive policies stimulate the energy transition attracting in particular foreign entrants diversifying into renewables or having more policy experience at the same time they suggest that adverse policy changes in one country affect how firms assess policies in other countries highlighting the need for policy coordination at a supranational level

modelling the impact of environmental regulations on bilateral trade flows oecd 1990 1996 since the early seventies an increasing attention has been paid to the impact environmental polict nmight have on foreign trade one of the most important issues is whether countries with relatively strict environmental regulations tend to experience a deterioration of international competitiveness and thus a fall in exports and a rise in imports of the pollution intensive commodities or on the other hand benefit from the improvement in environmentally more sensitive industries so far most empirical studies have concluded that the proportion of environmental costs to the total production costs is still so marginal that environmental policies have hardly any effect on comparative advantage patterns and thus on foreign trade one of the few exceptions is van beers and van den bergh 1997 who found that stricter regulations have some negative impact on bilateral trade flows between oecd countries the aim of this paper is to show that tyhis outcome is partly due to model mis specification the analysis id based on a triple indexed model and on its variants it is found that as soon as both the importing and exporting country specific effects are taken into consideration the relationship between stricter regulations and foreign trade becomes statistically insignificant this suggests that environmental costs do not have a real impact neither negative nor positive on foreign trade

china s carbon dioxide emissions an interprovincial comparative analysis of foreign capital and domestic capital abstract against the background of china s further relaxation of foreign investment control and implementation of energy conservation and emissions reduction the data of 30 provinces in china from 2001 to 2015 were used to measure the carbon dioxide emissions levels foreign direct investment stock and domestic capital stock in various regions the impulse response function variance decomposition and panel causality test in the panel vector autoregressive model evaluated in detail the impact of foreign capital inflows domestic capital inputs and economic growth on co2 emissions in regions of different energy intensity the study found that on the whole foreign direct investment has no significant impact on china s carbon dioxide emissions china s carbon dioxide emissions are mainly driven by domestic investment and economic growth the sub regional analysis based on different energy intensities shows that in areas of low energy intensity and medium energy intensity foreign direct investment has a significant impact on co2 emissions and the contribution of foreign investment to co2 emissions is between 12 2 and 14 1 the panel causality test found that in the short term foreign direct investment and domestic capital have significant predictive effects on carbon dioxide in various regions

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