on the robustness of robustness checks of the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis since its first inception in the debate on the relationship between environment and growth in 1992 the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis ekc hereafter has been subject of continuous and intense scrutiny the most recent line of investigation criticizes the ekc hypothesis on more fundamental grounds in that it stresses the lack of sufficient statistical testing of the empirical relationship and questions the very existence of the notion of ekc attention is in particular drawn on the stationarity properties of the series involved per capita emissions or concentrations and per capita gdp and in case of presence of unit roots on the cointegration property that must be present for the ekc to be a well defined concept only at that point can the researcher ask whether the long run relationship exhibits an inverted u pattern on the basis of panel integration and cointegration tests for sulfur stern 2004 and perman and stern 1999 2003 have presented evidence and forcefully stated that the ekc hypothesis does not exist in this paper we ask whether similar strong conclusions can be arrived at when carrying out tests of system fractional integration and cointegration as an example we use the controversial case of carbon dioxide emissions the results show that more ekcs come back into life relative to traditional integration cointegration tests however we confirm that the ekc hypothesis remains a fragile concept

the middle class collapse and the environment abstract the thesis that unequal societies are harmful to the planet was defended by boyce 1994 in a framework based on the unequal bargaining power between rich and poor our study reinvestigates this theory by removing any reference to power in order to study the conditions under which it can still occur we show that a middle class collapse can aggravate or alleviate the burden on the planet depending on income disparities and weight of upward vs downward mobility moreover the paper shows how an appropriate environmental policy can increase the political acceptability of a social one designed for mitigating the deleterious effects of a middle class collapse through the reduction of ex post income disparities

projection of energy intensive material production for bottom up scenario building abstract the production growth of energy intensive commodities in physical terms is an important component of bottom up emission scenarios and a relevant national circumstance to be incorporated in schemes for differentiating greenhouse gas emission allowances in this study average future growth rates of physical production are estimated for various branches of the energy intensive industry in a wide range of countries to this end historic patterns of growth were analysed on a per capita basis from the 1980s onwards per capita production levels of steel cement and refinery products tend to level off for all countries as per capita income increases these stabilisation levels however differ by a factor of 10 from country to country petrochemical and total paper and board production per capita on the contrary keeps on increasing with increasing income and per capita aluminium production shows a rather weak relationship to income aggregated annual growth of physical production of energy intensive commodities in this time period amounted to 5 9 in low 1 1 in middle and 0 8 in high income countries assuming that a country experiences declining growth rates of physical production as its income increases these aggregated figures may be used to estimate future growth rates projections thus based on recent growth trends suggest that earlier estimates may be improved

rotating savings and credit associations credit markets and efficiency this paper examines the allocative performance of rotating savings and credit associations roscas a financial institution which is observed world wide we develop a model in which individuals save for an indivisible good and study roscas which distribute funds using random allocation and bidding the allocations achieved by the two types of rosca are compared with that achieved by a credit market and with efficient allocations more generally we find that neither type of rosca is efficient and that individuals are better off with a credit market than a bidding rosca nonetheless a random rosca may sometimes yield a higher level of ex ante expected utility to prospective participants than would a credit market i introduction rotating savings and credit associations roscas are a widely observed institution for financial intermediation they are found all over the world particularly in developing countries and have heretofore received scant attention from economists this paper and its companion piece besley coate and loury 1993 constitute a first attempt to analyse their economic role and performance roscas come in two main forms the first type allocates funds randomly in a random rosca members commit to putting a fixed sum of money into a pot for each period of the rosca s life lots are drawn and the pot is randomly allocated to one of the members in the next period the process repeats itself with each previous winner excluded from the draw the process continues until each rosca member has received the pot once at this point the rosca is either disbanded or begins over again individuals may also form a bidding rosca in which the pot is allocated via a bidding procedure the individual who

fossil resource trade balances emerging trends for the uk abstract the aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which the uk can be classified as a net importer of fossil resources and a creator of pollution havens abroad between 1968 and 2000 using input output techniques and a derived resource flow classification system both the physical trade balance ptb and pollution trade balance utb associated with fossil resource use are computed the ptb shows that between 1968 and the early 1980 s the uk is presented as a net importer of direct fossil resource flows between 1984 and 2000 the uk is identified as a net exporter of direct fossil resources these trends are primarily explained by the uk s discovery and commercial production of north sea oil and gas fields in the late 1970s on the other hand the utb shows that over the whole period the indirect used flows attributable to the uk s exports are higher than those attributable to its imports these findings suggest that the uk did not create pollution havens abroad from the use of fossil resources between 1968 and 2000 however it is noticeable in both cases that from 1995 the uk s position as a net exporter has been decreasing considerably maturing north sea oil and gas fields set against increasing demands for fossil fuels and imported goods is signalling a return to the uk s pre 1984 dependence on direct imported fossil resources and the possible creation of pollution havens abroad knowledge of these trends contributes to the evidence base for the uk s changing import and export structure and the potential environmental repercussions at home and abroad

interrelationships between income health and the environment extending the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract this paper examines the link between the health indicators and the environmental variables for a cross section of countries widely dispersed on the economic development spectrum while environment and income are seen to have an inverted u shaped relationship environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis it is also well established that environment and health are positively related our study focuses on the implications of this for the relationship between health and income in the early phases of income growth the gains in health and the losses in environmental quality could cancel each other out and this challenges the idea that as incomes increase health would always improve to empirically analyse these issues we estimate a two stage least squares model that focuses on the impact of income and the environment on health status with environment being an endogenous variable our results show that the environmental stress variable has a significant negative effect on health status at the same time gross national product gnp levels are shown to vary positively with health status variables we find that the health gains obtained through improved incomes can be negated to a significant extent if the indirect effect of income acting via the environment is ignored research findings in this regard would be a useful policy instrument towards maximising both the environmental and health gains that come with economic growth and development

statistical measures of unsustainability abstract statistical measures are needed to reveal at a glance how far or near various countries are to meeting the conditions of long run sustainability and how conditions are changing on a year to year basis i e whether sustainability is being approached or not the scheme proposed in this paper presents numerical comparisons of energy and materials use in the real world vis a vis an ideal case where all of the identifiable criteria for sustainability are satisfied apart from population stabilization five general but quantifiable criteria for sustainability are suggested including 1 stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere 2 stabilization of acidity ph in rainfall 3 reduction of dissipative uses and wastes of heavy metals to natural mobilization rates or lower 4 elimination of agriculture based on pumping fossil water from non renewable aquifers and 5 elimination of loss of arable land because of salination or erosion other criteria such as preservation of biodiversity and socio economic equity between countries and generations might be added to the list they introduce more difficult measurement problems however which are not considered further in the paper having fixed the list of criteria the next step is to identify measures that either go to zero or unity as the system approaches more and more closely to sustainability at least in the limited sense defined above various types of measures of sustainability unsustainability can be developed viz i measures of relative dependence of the economy on non renewable sources of energy and materials ii measures of the productivity of energy and materials consumed by the economic system and iii measures of dissipative loss especially of toxic and hazardous substances specific examples of each type are discussed

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

international trade and environmental quality a survey abstract international trade has been incorporating various aspects of environmental issues since 1970 the extent to which environmental problems might affect many facets of trade or vice versa has been the subject of considerable debate over these years in this article we have attempted to establish some of the links between international trade and environmental quality by performing a comprehensive literature review we discuss issues such as establishing direct and indirect effects of international trade on environmental quality effects of trade on economic development environmental quality and energy and their relation with each other and finally the role of governments and international organizations in this context studies have so far revealed some linkages between trade and environment through conventional trade theory however interactions between international trade and types of pollution their sink and assimilative capacity need to be analyzed using a general equilibrium approach currently very little knowledge and agreement on the nature of interactions between trade theories development process and environmental quality exist existing studies have shown that the structure of environmental regulations should be modified to reflect the existence of trade under imperfect competition therefore further research on the interaction between new trade theory and environmental regulation is needed also theoretical and quantitative analysis regarding the effects of environmental regulations on competitiveness and location decision is needed the intensity and type of environmental measures vary across issues and countries therefore harmonizing environmental measures creates an inefficient atmosphere and to assume that trade restrictions will either improve or reverse the environmental damages is a serious mistake given the dynamic and intricate nature of the problem trade and environment debate continues despite vast research and poses a challenge for researchers and policy makers in the foreseeable future

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck abstract recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages these studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators results imply that ekcs may exist for a number of cases however the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and or lifestyle changes significantly more consumption based measures such co2 emissions and municipal waste for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income by considering consumption and trade patterns the author re examines the concept of the ekc and proposes the use of alternative consumption based measures of environmental impact the author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption

sustainable homeservices toward household services that enhance ecological social and economic sustainability abstract the idea of services replacing products is increasingly offered as a solution to making the production and consumption patterns of the affluent consumers more sustainable however the discussion about sustainable services or sustainable product service systems tends to emphasize the eco efficiency perspective rather than explicitly capture all sustainability aspects social or socioeconomic considerations are often forgotten or by passed without scrutiny this paper argues that there is the need for a concept of sustainable services in which the social sustainability aspect is also recognized with equal attention since a major part of private consumption occurs in the household context living at home and moving to and from it this paper will put forth the concept of sustainable homeservices and will suggest a way to assess sustainability of services directed to households for assessing the sustainability of services directed to households a set of indicators relating to the ecological social and economic dimensions of sustainability is proposed with the aim of giving an idea of how to assess homeservices in practical terms the paper will also exemplify how one could operationalize these indicators on an ordinal rating scale the conclusion is that it is possible to assess the sustainability of a homeservice in a relative fashion using no service or the product alternative as the point of comparison households alone have a limited capacity to influence their consumption choices because other actors set the frame for this reason institutional arrangements for making services easily available to households are outlined it appears that housing organizations have a central role in the alternative option for organizing the supply of service provision they are involved in five of the seven alternative ways of supplying services that could be identified the role of the housing organization can vary from direct supply to lighter forms such as cooperative arrangements with external service providers or resident involvement

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

sustainability in natural resource management abstract sustainability is the objective that many disciplines indicate as being essential to the resolution of environmental degradation although there is no agreement about what this term exactly means this study defines environmental problems as externalities most of these occurring between different generations we analyze the reasons why traditional solutions for externalities do not work in the intergenerational context our conclusions are on the one hand that traditional methods for evaluating the costs and benefits affecting different generations should be improved secondly an intergenerational redistribution of natural resource property rights is essential to guarantee equality of opportunities for all generations and therefore to ensure sustainability adequate redistribution of property rights will depend on the type of resource as well as on other factors such as the rate of return on its exploitation and the current generations propensity to consume in all cases however sustainability is sufficiently guaranteed by conceding property rights as a whole to the future

trade environment and development the issues in perspective abstract this special issue on trade and the environment brings together a number of papers that are constructively critical of the conventional economic wisdom on the topic we think that this criticism is warranted because of the decidely uncritical way in which free trade has been advocated in much of the literature and especially in policy the papers analyse the validity of the underlying assumptions on which the conventional wisdom is based and provide suggestions for ways to facilitate trade that is also adequately protective of the environment sustainability and other social values in this introductory piece we discuss trade the environment and sustainability summarizing arguments in the papers included in this issue and adding a few additional points not covered by them

the effects of the paris climate agreement on stock markets evidence from the german stock market we investigate the effects of the 2016 paris climate agreement on the german stock market by considering the impact of 20 announcements pertaining to the agreement on 17 industries the event study

how does the stock market react to the announcement of green policies abstract we investigate the impact of 19 announcements of environmental regulation on the equities listed on the australian stock exchange over the period 2005 2011 using a well established event study methodology we assess whether these announcements are value constructive or destructive for equity investors additionally we estimate the change in systematic risk following the announcements our results show that the australian market was particularly sensitive to the carbon pollution reduction scheme cprs announcement a cumulative abnormal return of 31 was recorded in the alternative energy sector after australia submitted its target range to the copenhagen accord we observe that a move towards a greener nation has a mixed effect on abnormal returns with apparent sector by sector differences green policies appear to affect the long term systematic risk of industries leading to the diamond risk phenomenon

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

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

luxury or lock in an exploration of unsustainable consumption in the uk 1968 to 2000 abstract sustainable consumption demands the ability to understand the patterns of resource consumption associated with changing lifestyles this paper explores changes in resource consumption patterns in the uk between 1968 and 2000 using an environmental input output model the paper tracks the fossil resource requirements attributable to 8 high level functional purposes and finds that overall fossil resource consumption increased 35 over the 32 year period the four functional purposes most closely related to the provision of basic material needs showed little change over the period the bulk of the increase in fossil resource requirements was attributable to two specific functional purposes 1 recreation and entertainment 2 commuting and business travel the authors discuss the relevance of these findings for the continuing debate over the question whether rising consumption is being driven by expanding social aspirations luxury or whether it is the result of structural lock in

the instability of the adjusted and unadjusted environmental kuznets curves abstract we test the stability of the unadjusted and adjusted environmental kuznets curves ekcs our results provide evidence in favour of a theoretically funded adjusted ekc hypothesis in which the impact of per capita gdp on co 2 emissions is evaluated conditionally to the effects of the industry mix and of the energy supply infrastructure in this specification the shape of the gdp co 2 relationship appears quite sensitive to changes in the estimation period in the final part of the paper signs and dynamics of fixed effects of individual countries in different specifications are interpreted as measures of virtuous or vicious of environmental behaviour

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

developments in the throughput income relationship theoretical and empirical observations abstract it has been suggested that the relationship between income and the associated environmental pressure in terms of derived materials inputs and pollution levels may take an inverted u shape indicating a delinking of environmental pressure from economic growth in relation to rising per capita incomes the likelihood of such a relationship being persistent is discussed in the context of a simple macro model of industrial metabolism and the possibility of relinking clearly emerges data on specific indicators of environmental pressure i e the throughput of materials energy and the volume of transport in 19 countries have been used to investigate patterns of delinking the results suggest that delinking may not be persistent already some advanced economies may be entering a new period of relinking the relationships between environmental pressure and welfare in the medium long term may be n shaped rather than inverted u shaped

la crema a case study of mutual fire insurance we analyze a mutual fire insurance mechanism used in andorra which is called la crema in the local language this mechanism relies on households announced property values to determine how much a household is reimbursed in the case of a fire and how payments are apportioned among other households the only pareto efficient allocation reachable through the mechanism requires that all households honestly report the true value of their property however such honest reporting is not an equilibrium except in the extreme case in which the property values are identical for all households nevertheless as the size of the society becomes large the benefits from deviating from truthful reporting vanish and all the nondegenerate equilibria of the mechanism are nearly truthful and approximately pareto efficient

austria s co2 responsibility and the carbon content of its international trade abstract seeking to limit global warming to 2 c puts narrow restrictions on the remaining carbon budget while the prevalent accounting framework for carbon emissions is production based production based principle pbp we here quantify the co2 emissions on the basis of the consumption based principle cbp for austria at a methodological level a multi regional input output model with full linkages is used to account for austria s co2 responsibility on a global scale estimates are carried out for the years 1997 and 2004 results show that during 1997 co2 responsibility based on cbp were 36 larger than those based on pbp this relation has increased through time the cbp indicator of 2004 was 44 larger than the pbp in terms of carbon emission location for each euro spent on austrian final demand in 2004 it is estimated that two thirds of the co2 emissions occur outside austrian borders regarding the origin of the emissions embodied in imports it is estimated that about one fourth originated in non annex i countries in 1997 this proportion increased to one third by 2004 due to this divergence between cbp and pbp indicators there is a need to re think current accounting bases in order to properly assign co2 responsibilities

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

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

long term trends in direct and indirect household energy intensities a factor in dematerialisation abstract dematerialisation is assumed to contribute significantly to the alleviation of environmental problems one of the possible causes of dematerialisation is a change in the consumption patterns of households the aim of this article is to analyse changes consumption patterns of dutch households in the period between 1948 to 1996 in order to discover whether these changes haven influenced the energy intensity of society due to the rise in consumption the total household energy requirement per capita grew on average by 2 4 per year over a period of 48 years this figure ignores efficiency changes in the supplying sectors in the same period the total energy intensity of households fluctuated but on average changed from 5 6 to 6 3 mj nlg an increase of 0 25 per year if we exclude the direct energy consumption we find a slight decline in the indirect energy intensity namely from 3 8 to 3 6 mj nlg 0 14 per year no significant trends to a lower energy intensity are found and there is no indication of dematerialisation of the consumption patterns if governments pursue a policy of sustainable development they have to take into account the fact that dematerialisation of the consumption pattern does not seem to be an autonomous process

the interaction of population growth and environmental quality an important question for policy is whether holding constant per capita income and other relevant factors population pressures have a significant effect upon environmental degradation the authors examine the effect of population pressures upon deforestation in 64 developing countries in an attempt to provide relevant empirical findings data on deforestation were drawn from the food and agriculture organizations production yearbook results suggest that a relationship exists between per capita income and deforestation and that for africa rural population density shifts the relationship upward the increase in the rate of deforestation levels off as income increases the rate of growth in per capita income also has a significant negative impact upon deforestation although the magnitude of the effect is small the authors close in stressing that reducing the rate of population growth is not necessarily the best way to reduce the rate of deforestation deforestation in developing countries is really a problem of market failure since property rights are often neither defined nor enforced there is essentially no private cost of deforestation with no long term stake in the land people have no incentive to use land efficiently this situation must be addressed in conjunction with the problems of poverty and population growth

ekc analysis for studying economic growth and environmental quality a case study in china compared with the extensive research on the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality in developed countries there is a paucity of an empirical research on studying the relation for developing countries based upon the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory this paper develops regression models for investigating the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality in china the ekc analysis based on six pollution indices is illustrated with a case study in jiaxing of zhejiang china

do corporate global environmental standards create or destroy market value arguments can be made on both sides of the question of whether a stringent global corporate environmental standard represents a competitive asset or liability for multinational enterprises mnes investing in emerging and developing markets analyzing the global environmental standards of a sample of u s based mnes in relation to their stock market performance we find that firms adopting a single stringent global environmental standard have much higher market values as measured by tobin sq than firms defaulting to less stringent or poorly enforced host country standards thus developing countries that use lax environmental regulations to attract foreign direct investment may end up attracting poorer quality and perhaps less competitive firms our results also suggest that externalities are incorporated to a significant extent in firm valuation we discuss plausible reasons for this observation

the nexus between carbon emissions energy consumption and economic growth in middle east countries a panel data analysis abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis assumes that there is an inverted u shaped relationship between environmental degradation and income per capita in other words as a country grows it is assumed that its environmental quality improves in this study we aim to test the ekc hypothesis for 12 middle east countries during the period 1990 2008 by employing recently developed panel data methods our results provide evidence contrary to the ekc hypothesis we found evidence favorable to the u shaped ekc for 5 middle east countries whereas an inverted u shaped curve was identified for only 3 middle east countries furthermore there appear to be no causal links between income and co 2 emissions for the other 4 countries regarding the direction of causality there appears to be a unidirectional causality from economic growth to energy consumption in the short run in the long run however the unidirectional causality chain runs from energy consumption and economic growth to co 2 emissions we also suggest some crucial policy implications depending on these results

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

mill s scissors structural change and the natural resource inputs to labour the environmental structural change strategy claims that by shifting our expenditures to economic sectors with lower environmental intensity absolute resource consumption and environmental impact can be lowered environmental input output methodologies for computing these intensities attribute no resource consumption to labour or households because these are not classified as sectors the suggestion that service sectors entail less environmental impact however loses force if a unit of labour contains embodied energy and attributing these inputs to labour drastically reduces intensity variation between sectors relative growth of service sectors has furthermore not been accompanied by decreased resource consumption thus models whose intensity computations cover not only inter firm payments but also labour earnings and household expenditures may have superior predictive power if moreover natural resource and labour inputs to product are incommensurable intensity ratios themselves have perhaps only monetary rather than real significance

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

the use of physical indicators for industrial energy demand scenarios abstract scientific information on the size and nature of the threat of climate change is needed by politicians in order to weight their decisions computerised models are extremely useful tools to quantify the long term effects of current policies this paper describes a new modelling approach that allows formulation of industrial energy demand projections consistent with the assumptions for scenario drivers such as gdp and population in the model a level of industrial production is used as a key variable and we define it in physical units rather than in monetary units the aim of this research is to increase insights that come with long term energy demand scenarios this research clearly shows that physical indicators provide additional insights in scenario analysis the use of physical indicators instead of monetary indicators seems to affect the energy scenarios significantly the differences with monetary indicators are larger in developing regions than in oecd regions we conclude that an integrated energy and materials approach reveals developments that are hardly visible using a monetary approach moreover this research shows the potential and benefits of the use of physical indicators for scenario development

trade and the environment a partial synthesis there is an emerging consensus in the environmentalist community opposing free trade while some economists view this as simply another outlet for protectionism recent work has begun to move beyond the rhetoric to probe more deeply into the theoretical and empirical relationships between international trade and environmental quality the purpose of the present paper is twofold we first integrate some of the existing literature by using the simple concepts of general equilibrium pollution supply and demand our survey of the trade and environment literature is more

towards an integrated framework for development and environment policy the dynamics of environmental kuznets curves abstract environmental kuznets curves ekcs have recently received considerable attention in development and environment policy but little is known on how the interaction between ecological and economic factors may result in an ekc or other qualitatively different outcomes we introduce a restricted class of vector valued differential equations for representing the evolution of socioeconomic and environmental variables which influence or are influenced by the process of economic development our model includes not only the complete path of each variable over time but also the highly critical interactions among multiple variables we demonstrate analytically and numerically that among a multiplicity of possible outcomes an inverted u pattern can only be obtained under specific circumstances and requires attention to the multiple factors which form the economic environmental system rather than a single dominant one

environmental regulation the obama effect and the stock market some empirical results following the signing of the kyoto protocol in 2005 a new wave of green policies emerged with the intention of protecting our planet this study explores the effects these policies have on capital markets in particular we assess how the risk and return of us industrial portfolios react to the announcement of green policies event study methodology and asset pricing models are used to that end we document negative abnormal returns and increase in systematic risk for the biggest polluters whereas environmentally friendly businesses are affected to a lesser degree an apparent obama effect is observed resulting from the 2008 outcome of the us presidential election

the economics of rotating savings and credit associations supported by the center for energy policy studies m i t and the japanese corporate associates program at the kennedy school of government

internal migration and the environmental kuznets curve for us hazardous waste sites abstract in the recent special issue of ecological economics devoted to the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis rothman speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption rothman d 1998 environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck a case for consumption based approaches ecol econ 25 178 consistent with rothman s general hypothesis of distancing as a possible source of ekc results this empirical study advances and tests a line of argument in which internal migration plays a central explanatory role for an observed ekc for us hazardous waste sites two specific hypotheses tested are i proximity to hazardous waste site build up emerges as a factor in the migration decisions of individuals as per capita income increases beyond a threshold level and ii the level of income at which the ekc turns downwards is equal to the threshold level of income in i results provide evidence that migration is a contributing factor to the observed ekc

the impact of environmental management on firm performance environmental management has the potential to play a pivotal role in the financial performance of the firm many individuals suggest that profitability is hurt by the higher production costs of environmental management initiatives while others cite anecdotal evidence of increased profitability a theoretical model is proposed that links strong environmental management to improved perceived future financial performance as measured by stock market performance the linkage to firm performance is tested empirically using financial event methodology and archival data of firm level environmental and financial performance significant positive returns were measured for strong environmental management as indicated by environmental performance awards and significant negative returns were measured for weak environmental management as indicated by environmental crises the implicit financial market valuation of these events also was estimated cross sectional analysis of the environmental award events revealed differences for first time awards and between industries first time award announcements were associated with greater increases in market valuation although smaller increases were observed for firms in environmentally dirty industries possibly indicative of market skepticism this linkage between environmental management and financial performance can be used by both researchers and practitioners as one measure of the benefits experienced by industry leaders and as one criterion against which to measure investment alternatives

can environmental quality spread through institutions spatial relationships are known phenomena in ecological studies that refer to the relationships between certain variables observed in different localities different mechanisms have been suggested to explain this phenomenon such as the pollution displacement hypothesis foreign direct investment international trade and strategic response of countries to transboundary pollution flows this paper develops a new mechanism in the sense that environmental quality of countries spreads spatially to their neighbors through the spillover of the institutional quality of countries to test this hypothesis a panel data model is constructed that estimates the impact of the institutional quality of countries and their neighbors on their co2 emission intensity of energy use using data for 129 countries over the period 1980 2007 the findings prove the existence of this mechanism at the global and regional levels

energy intensity in the iron and steel industry a comparison of physical and economic indicators abstract energy consumption of the iron and steel industry is examined in seven countries brazil china france germany japan poland and the united states for the period 1980 1991 using a decomposition analysis based on physical indicators for process type and product mix we decompose intra sectoral structural changes and efficiency improvements specific energy consumption decreased in all countries except poland efficiency improvement played a key role in brazil china germany and the us while structural changes were the main driver for energy savings in france and japan we also compare the use of various economic indicators to physical indicators and find that they do not track physical developments well in poland or the developing countries we studied in the industrialized countries value added based energy intensity indicators generally reflect the specific energy consumption better than other economic indicators although large differences occur in individual years we found a smaller correlation between other economic indicators gross output and value of shipments and specific energy consumption we conclude that use of physical energy intensity indicators improves comparability between countries provides greater information for policy makers regarding intra sectoral structural changes and provides detailed explanations for observed changes in energy intensity

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

us environmental load displacement examining consumption regulations and the role of nafta abstract in light of concerns that structural changes to us production may not be accompanied by similar changes to us consumption this paper provides a detailed examination of us environmental load displacement over the period 1974 2001 the forces that drive such displacement are also examined with particular attention paid to the scale and composition of us consumption the share of imports in consumption the role of environmental regulations and the potential impact of nafta it is found that the usa as a whole has experienced environmental load displacement over the period under consideration with the extent of this displacement seeming to increase over the last decade it would appear to be the increasing scale of us trade that is increasing environmental load displacement indeed the composition of us imports and exports have become significantly cleaner over the period considered however although imports from mexico have grown more rapidly than exports to mexico no evidence is found to suggest that nafta is increasing displacement to mexico with regard to us domestic consumption patterns although they have become cleaner a greater share than ever is now met via imports sectoral pollution abatement costs are found to be a determinant of this increasing share of imports in domestic consumption

municipal waste kuznets curves evidence on socio economic drivers and policy effectiveness from the eu waste generation and waste disposal are becoming increasingly prominent in the environmental arena from a policy perspective and in the context of delinking analysis in general waste generation is still increasing proportionally with income and economic and environmental costs associated to landfilling are also increasing this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of waste generation incineration and landfill dynamics based on panel data for the eu25 to assess the effects of different drivers economic structural policy and the eventual differences between western and eastern eu countries we show that for waste generation there is still no waste kuznets curve wkc trend although elasticity to income drivers appears lower than in the past landfill and other policy effects do not seem to provide backward incentives for waste prevention and in terms of landfill and incineration as expected they are respectively decreasing and increasing with policy acting as a strong driver eastern countries appear to be performing generally quite well thus benefiting from eu membership and related policies in terms of environmental performance we can conclude that although absolute delinking is far from being achieved for waste generation there are some first positive signs of an increasing relative delinking for waste generation and robust landfill diversion and varying evidence of a significant role of the eu waste policies implemented in the late 1990s and early 2000s our evidence suggests that if while landfill diversion is currently associated to a delinking partly explained by eu policies waste prevention must be the next objective of waste regulation efforts

individual risk and mutual insurance this paper examines how in the presence of individual risk economic efficiency can be achieved without an unrealistically large number of contingent claims market uncertainty is specified in such a way that general types of individual risk and collective risk are properly accounted for and so that specifically market clearing is always satisfied ex post as well as ex ante we show that consistency of beliefs and optimality of allocation can be guaranteed with an appropriate array of pure arrow securities to spread collective risk and mutual insurance policies to pool individual risk when there is individual risk common to like groups of individuals pooling risk by means of mutual insurance permits substantial economizing on market transactions as compared to those required if dealing instead with the full complement of pure arrow securities we show that if there are n households consisting of h types each facing the possibility of being in s individual states together with t collective states then ensuring pareto optimality requires only h s 1 t independent mutual insurance policies plus t pure arrow securities our results also help to clarify the question of which missing markets may affect allocational efficiency

an empirical study of income growth and manufacturing industry pollution in new england 1980 1990 abstract this paper is an empirical examination of how a community s income growth is affected by polluting manufacturing activity the hypothesis i test is that this activity has two conflicting effects first industrial investment encourages economic growth through the creation of employment and other positive economic spillover effects and second the associated pollution causes out migration of residents i hypothesize that a community that is initially relatively wealthy will experience relatively more out migration of its higher income residents who are assumed to have a lower tolerance for pollution thus such communities will grow less in response to such investment compared to its poorer neighbors therefore in my econometric model the marginal effect of pollution on income growth is allowed to vary with initial incomes i use a unique data set that incorporates toxics release inventory tri and census tract level data for new england for the years 1980 and 1990 the estimated effect of pollution on growth is negative on average and is more negative in initial incomes in an effort to measure the out migration effects of pollution i use a separate measure of toxic pollution i find that holding constant total pollution toxic pollution has a more negative effect on growth for wealthier communities these results are consistent with the above hypotheses

on impatience economic growth and the environmental kuznets curve a dynamic analysis of resource management the paper presents a dynamic analysis of natural resource management and investigates some key factors that affect optimal management and resource conservation using a recursive specification of time preferences we show how endogenous discounting and impatience can affect the motivation for both capital investments and environmental preservation we examine the relationships between economic growth and environmental quality endogenous discounting provides new insights in the economic dynamics underlying the environmental kuznets curve by treating growth as endogenous we examine how externalities and economic growth interact with each other we investigate how economic development can contribute to an increased demand for environmental preservation as an important new result we also show how poverty can contribute to environmental degradation

a consumption based approach to environmental kuznets curves using the ecological footprint indicator recent research suggests that consumption based measures offer an insightful perspective on the debate on the relationship between economic growth and the environment in this article we deepen the

wavering between radical and realistic sustainable consumption policies in search for the best feasible trajectories abstract in this article radical change in the context of sustainable development is seen as a long term process in which steady progress in the right direction is regarded as more essential than quick success the author argues that pressing for swift radical changes bears a serious risk of becoming counter productive because pressing for rapid change is often wasteful and may prevent the best possible ways of exploitation of innovations rapid change over a wide front of applications and sectors is usually impossible pressing for rapid changes usually encounters strong opposition from interest groups thereby risking to get bogged down in acceptability discourses transition management such as for a transition towards sustainable consumption seems often to presuppose the need for radical changes even though the embedding function of transition management is a helpful concept and tool for sustainable consumption strategies the lack or the negligence of the role of objective functions is a disturbing feature of transition management theories all in all the need for radical change should emerge as the transition process unfolds there is no good scientific reason for a priori claims for radical changes as a kind of new dogma