inequality resource depletion and welfare accounting applications to indonesia and costa rica abstract ahluwalia and chenery noted that the standard measures of gdp growth imply distributional weights that place greater weight on the income of richer income groups and proposed distribution neutral and pro poor alternatives more recently pilot studies by the world resources institute wri have questioned the sustainability of gdp growth and have introduced natural resource modifications to national income accounting to date no studies have undertaken both revisions concurrently creating a revised measure based on gdp but corrected for both distributional bias and resource depletion such a measure is derived in this paper and its impact illustrated with data from indonesia and costa rica the countries studied by the wri

wicksell lindahl and the theory of public goods wicksell s and lindahl s ideas on public goods and decisions are reviewed in light of later developments in the theoretical economics literature i begin by discussing their normative ideals in particular the notion of justness and the sources of the difficulties in reaching them wicksell s and lindahl s ideal states as well as the obstacles that they perceive are compared to more recent views on free riding and on the behavior of elected representatives their views on political bargaining are then related to later concepts in particular to the core of the economy

does income inequality harm the environment empirical evidence from the united states abstract this study revisits the growth inequality environment nexus in the context of country specific time series data the short and long run effects of income inequality economic growth and energy consumption on co2 emissions in the u s are examined using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach we find that more equitable distribution of income in the u s results in better environmental quality in the short and long run it is also found that in both the short and long run economic growth has a beneficial effect on environmental quality whereas energy consumption has a detrimental effect on the environment

el salvador s agricultural sector macroeconomic policy agrarian change and the environment abstract this paper argues that current agricultural policy in el salvador is failing to further the goals of macroeconomic growth and stability sustainable livelihood security and environmental sustainability macroeconomic policy has turned relative prices sharply against agriculture the plight of the rural poor has been exacerbated by continuing inequities in the agrarian structure the breakdown in rural livelihoods and limited access to land and other assets is accelerating environmental degradation suggested alternative policies such as more favorable price policies agrarian reform and environmental restoration would promote sustainable development by capitalizing on the complementarity among growth poverty reduction and consolidation of peace

inequality and the environmental kuznets curve abstract is income inequality harmful to the environment the answer to this question has not reached a consensus in the literature this study seeks to provide insight into this question by examining the influence of income inequality on the environmental kuznets curve ekc i e the impact of income inequality on the ekc turning point two potential mechanisms through which inequality may affect the ekc turning point by reducing public demand for environmental protection and by increasing a power of capital owners to prevent such protection using a large sample n 170 174 of countries we find evidence of the ekc for so2 emissions and income inequality has a significant impact on the ekc turning point income inequality increases the ekc turning point suggesting that high inequality can be damaging to the environment the results are robust to potential outliers different data sources of income inequality a different so2 emissions measure changes in model specification different samples and an alternative estimation method we also find that inequality appears to be more important than corruption in determining the ekc turning point

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

the impact of federal interest rate regulations on the small saver further evidence this paper provides further evidence on the distributional impact of interest rate ceilings on the small saver cross section data from the 1977 consumer credit survey was used to estimate the implicit losses imposed on different income classes by government regulations our findings generally support earlier studies which found the implicit burden to be regressive among income classes however the degree of regressivity showed a marked decrease since 1970 these results may be explained by portfolio adjustments of households and financial innovations in response to deposit rate ceilings and accelerating inflation during the 1970s in a recent paper in this journal clotfelter and lieberman 5 hereafter c l presented evidence of the distributional impact of rate ceilings on deposits in commercial banks and thrift institutions their estimates are based on distributions of households asset holdings in 1963 and show regressivity in the burden of interest losses caused by deposit rate ceilings over the period from 1968 to 1970 since 1963 however households portfolio compositions may have changed as households and financial markets adapted to higher rates of interest and inflation 2 this paper updates c l s estimates using data on financial asset holdings from the 1977 consumer credit survey 3

income inequality and the environment aggregation bias in environmental kuznets curves abstract the environmental kuznets curve assumes an inverted u shaped relation between environmental damage and per capita income recently it has been argued in the literature that in addition to income levels the inequality in the distribution of power and income is positively related to environmental degradation we provide an additional argument based on simple aggregation for including a measure of income dispersion in empirical analyses when the relationship between environmental damage and household income is concave e g resembles an environmental kuznets curve then income inequality is negatively related to total environmental damage results from an empirical analysis of cross national variation indicate that the aggregation effect can run counter to and outweigh the political economy effect for some environmental indicators

the environment and the ethics of discounting an empirical analysis abstract this paper examines the application of discount rates by individuals and by governments when they make decisions about environmental resource use the paper is presented in the context of ethics as determined by what is good and also by what is right for society since in this instance there appears to be no conflict between the two perspectives in addition the paper assesses whether ethical considerations are included in decision making frameworks at the individual and community levels consistency of discount rate applications between individuals and governments is also investigated since consistency is an element of ethical arguments empirical data from a study of soil conservation adoption by philippines upland farmers are used in the analysis individual discount rates are assessed in relation to income and poverty interest rates paid on debt purpose of borrowings land tenure income inequality and soil conservation adoption some of the results appear to be counter intuitive and reasons for this phenomenon are sought the overall results have policy implications and suggestions are made about how an ethical perspective might be developed by governments to help ensure that decision making criteria are more consistent with the practices of individuals within the communities they serve it is suggested that this approach would lead to greater intergenerational and intragenerational equity and better environmental quality

the contribution of environmental regulations to the slowdown in productivity growth abstract the radical slowdown in productivity growth since 1965 is often attributed to environmental regulations several studies varying widely in method have attempted to assess this contribution here these analyses are reviewed and critiqued and a summary appraisal of the likely contribution of environmental regulations to the observed decrease in productivity growth is offered

inequality as a cause of environmental degradation abstract this paper advances two hypotheses first the extent of an environmentally degrading economic activity is a function of the balance of power between the winners who derive net benefits from the activity and the losers who bear net costs second greater inequalities of power and wealth lead all else equal to more environmental degradation

intra generational equity and sustainable welfare a time series analysis for the uk and sweden this paper discusses the importance of intra generational equity to sustainable development it outlines a number of methodologies for measuring income inequality in the economy and presents several possible ways of incorporating the impact of distributional effects into measures of welfare in the economy the authors highlight in particular an index developed by atkinson atkinson a b 1970 distributive politics and economic growth q j econ may 465 490 based on the social welfare model this method possesses two main advantages over other methods firstly it is expressed directly in terms of social well being secondly value judgements incorporated into the measure are made explicit through the parameter o which expresses society s degree of aversion to income inequality the paper calculates the value of the atkinson index for two case study countries sweden and the uk between 1950 and 1996 for a central estimate of o0 8 the results show that the welfare loss due to inequalities in the distribution of income varied between 5 and 10 for sweden and between 6 and 14 for the uk with the higher values coming towards the end of the period the paper explores the sensitivity of these results to changes in the value of o for the case of the uk and discusses the relevance of the work to the measurement of sustainable welfare 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

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

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

end of pipe or cleaner production how to go green in presence of income inequality and pro environmental behavior in this paper we consider a vertically differentiated duopoly model in which a green producer competes with a brown rival in a market in which consumers are environmentally concerned in particular consumers are assumed to value not only the intrinsic quality of a certain product but also its environmental impact this environmental valuation has a positional content consumers attach a positive attribute to the green product while penalizing the brown one in this context we consider the choice of the green firm between cleaner and end of pipe abatement efforts we find that the interplay between the intensity of market competition consumers income disparity and environmental concern can play a crucial role in directing the green producer towards one or the other technological choice more precisely the adoption of cleaner production technologies can be discouraged by low average income and by tough competition while it can be spurred by the moral social incentive towards pro environmental behavior

forest loss and economic inequality in the solomon islands using small area estimation to link environmental change to welfare outcomes abstract to study welfare effects of environmental change data from household surveys may be linked to remote sensing data using spatial aggregation to link risks ecological fallacy since surveys are usually representative for areas larger than the spatial scale of decision making units this paper uses survey to census imputation to estimate welfare indicators for small areas to study the effect of deforestation on subsequent inequality in the rural solomon islands this country depends on logging for almost half of foreign exchange and one sixth of government revenue and most forested land remains under customary ownership a sharp increase in log exports to seven times the sustainable yield and a major shift in export destinations as other countries withdrew from the tropical log trade represents an exogenous shock that helps to identify effects of deforestation on inequality rather than the reverse relationship a standard deviation increase in the rate of forest loss over 2000 to 2012 raises the gini index of inequality in 2013 by one third of a standard deviation mean incomes and poverty rates are also higher implying that deforestation makes some households richer while others become poorer these precisely estimated effects would be obscured using more spatially aggregated data

identifying the impacts of income inequality on co2 emissions empirical evidences from oecd countries and non oecd countries abstract the emergence of environmental quality challenges is rooted in social problems which mainly come from income inequality and power gap income inequality and climate change have been highlighted as hindering the achievement of sustainable development and environmental protection globally though existing literature has estimated the influences of income inequality on co2 emissions relatively little is known about the long run and short run effects from a cross national perspective therefore the aim of this study is to shed light on the long run and short run relationships between income inequality and per capita co2 emissions based on balanced country level panel dataset for 78 countries from 1990 to 2017 in order to understand how a country s economic level affects the link between inequality and co2 emissions this study classified the sample countries into three groups oecd countries low income non oecd countries and high income non oecd countries the fmols and dols model is applied to examine the relationship between the income inequality and per capita co2 emission meanwhile the estimates of an ardl model revealed the long run and short run effects our empirical results indicate that there is a long term cointegration relationship between income inequality and per capita co2 emissions higher income inequality promotes emission reductions in oecd countries and high income non oecd countries while the influences are insignificant in low income non oecd countries in the long run per capita income carbon intensity population size and urbanization were also considered in this study the estimates of an ardl model indicate that whilst income inequality does not have a significant impact on co2 emissions in the short run per capita national income positively affects co2 emissions meaning that income growth will accelerate emissions carbon intensity positively affects co2 emissions in the long term indicating that increased income facilitates increased energy use and emissions but that progress in co2 recycling technology may ultimately reduce emissions neither population size nor urbanization rate exerted any obvious effects on per capita co2 emissions from a policy perspective governments have an onerous task ahead of them in balancing economic efficiency and distributary justice lastly we provide insights for policy makers that in order to realize the goal of emission reductions in the long run it may be best to proceed by making reasonable national income redistribution policies and by adjusting the welfare system

impact of income inequality and environmental regulation on environmental quality evidence from china abstract china s environmental pollution is of widespread concern and environmental governance has become the country s main method of achieving high quality development environmental quality is a comprehensive indicator which includes many factors such as air water and solid waste pollution this study did not use a single pollutant as a substitute variable for environmental quality firstly we used principal component analysis to construct a comprehensive environmental quality index secondly the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology and panel quantile regression models were used with data from 30 chinese provinces in china from 1998 to 2017 to analyze the effect of income inequality and environmental regulation on environmental quality the constructed comprehensive index revealed that china s environmental quality had an m type trend over time the mean regression results showed that income inequality and environmental regulation improved environmental quality but higher income inequality reduced environmental quality the panel quantile regression model results revealed that the coefficient of income inequality was positively significant at the 10 30 quantiles and negatively significant at the 70 90 quantiles the coefficients of the absolute value of income inequality at the 10 30 quantiles were less than those at the 70 90 quantiles this implied that higher income inequality reduced environmental quality whereas higher environmental regulations improved environmental quality considering the possible impact of environmental quality on income inequality and environmental regulations we designed a simultaneous equation model to overcome the deviation caused by bilateral causality the conclusions of this study provide policymakers with a new perspective on environmental governance and new paths for achieving high quality development

the distributional impact of foreign deposits on federal deposit insurance premia abstract rapid growth of deposits in u s foreign bank branches and current u s government policies have combined to create a new inequality in the deposit insurance system our research shows that smaller banks are substantially subsidizing the insurance costs of the larger multinational institutions when insurance premiums are viewed in the context of an implicit tax it is highly regressive with the wealth transfer growing over time recent reform proposals do not fully address important international influences and therefore underestimate the scope of the problem

quantifying the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint abstract analysis of household consumption and its environmental impact remains one of the most important topics in sustainability research nevertheless much past and recent work has focused on domestic national averages neglecting both the growing importance of international trade on household carbon footprint and the variation between households of different income levels and demographics using consumer expenditure surveys and multi country life cycle assessment techniques this paper analyzes the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint we find that due to recently increased international trade 30 of total us household co 2 impact in 2004 occurred outside the us further households vary considerably in their co 2 responsibilities at least a factor of ten difference exists between low and high impact households with total household income and expenditure being the best predictors of both domestic and international portions of the total co 2 impact the global location of emissions which cannot be calculated using standard input output analysis and the variation of household impacts with income have important ramifications for polices designed to lower consumer impacts on climate change such as carbon taxes the effectiveness and fairness of such policies hinges on a proper understanding of how income distributions rebound effects and international trade affect them

interprovincial versus international free trade the brewing industry this paper examines the potential welfare changes resulting from the removal of the interprovincial and international trade barriers currently in place in the brewing industry using a cost function estimated on plant level data we find that the potential gains from rationalizing production following liberalizing trade between canada s provinces outweigh the further benefits which would result from free trade in the international sphere given interprovincial free trade the rationalization of the industry in terms of a reduced number of plants could lead to producer gains on a recurring basis equal to as much as 15 per cent of expenditures at market prices

social groups and co2 emissions in spanish households abstract this paper examines the social factors that underlie the composition of final demand and therefore determine the final volume of emissions the study throws light on the relationships between the parameters characterising spanish households income urban rural residence local population density head of household s level of education and social class and their behaviour with regard to consumption and the demand for goods and services on this basis we determine which consumption patterns are best aligned with sustainable growth and development our main conclusion is that the factors analysed determine the volume of emissions for each household in terms of their correlation with income which is the primary determinant of consumption patterns the methodology proposed combines linear sam models and econometric estimation of emissions elasticity with respect to spending

the carbon footprint of european households and income distribution abstract this paper calculates the carbon footprint of private consumption in the eu27 by five groups of household income using a fully fledged macroeconomic input output model covering 59 industries and five groups of household income for the eu27 due to macroeconomic feedback mechanisms this methodology besides induced intermediate demand also quantifies i private consumption induced in the other household groups ii impacts on other endogenous final demand components and iii negative feedback effects due to output price effects of household demand the carbon footprint is calculated separately for the consumption vector of each of the five income groups the simulation results yield a non linear income elasticity of direct and indirect emissions at each income level the value of the direct footprint income elasticity decreases from 1 32 first quintile to 0 69 fourth quintile the value of the indirect footprint income elasticity is always below unity and decreases from 0 89 to 0 62 the results in general reveal a relative decoupling effect the share of the top income group in income 45 is much larger than its share in the carbon footprint 37 and vice versa for the bottom income group 6 in income and 8 in footprint

household carbon inequality in urban china its sources and determinants designing mitigation policies for households requires knowledge of household carbon distributions this study surveys the household carbon inequality in urban china and analyzes its sources and determinants using weighted household survey data different from existing literatures studying carbon inequality on the international or regional level we focus on the household aspect and first survey its characteristics by some comparisons by ascribing household carbon emissions calculated by the consumer lifestyle approach to several consumption categories with the method of gini coefficient decomposition we find that residential consumption with high carbon intensity is the most important source of household carbon inequality in urban china food consumption and the consumption of educational cultural and recreational services are the next largest sources because of the consumed quantities or carbon intensity the application of shapley decomposition shows the determinants of household carbon inequality in urban china and their contributions which are household demographic characteristics 59 74 household employment and income 24 31 household burdens 8 00 and household assets and financial plans 7 95 the policy implications of these results are also discussed

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

relating the environmental impact of consumption to household expenditures an input output analysis in this paper we evaluate the relationships between household expenditures and the environmental impact categories climate change acidification eutrophication and smog formation by combining household expenditures with environmentally extended input output analysis expenditure elasticities are examined with regression analysis and are compared and interpreted on the basis of insight at the product level with data from the netherlands in the year 2000 we find that environmental impact increases with increasing household expenditures although the degree to which the environmental impact increases differs per impact category climate change and eutrophication increase less than proportionally with increasing expenditures acidification increases nearly proportionally with increasing expenditures whereas smog formation increases more than proportionally it appears that the mix of necessities and luxuries to which an environmental impact is related is essential in explaining the relationship

income distribution and environmental quality in china a spatial econometric perspective abstract paying heed to a surge of concern about the serious and continuous environmental degradation that is currently being witnessed in china in this paper we investigate whether income distribution contributes to environmental deterioration environmental degradation can be linked not only to income growth we argue but also to increases in income inequality the study calculated the gini coefficient of 31 province using a data set of 403 city level data in mainland china and estimated the linkage between income distribution and environmental deterioration utilizing balanced data for 31 chinese provinces during the period 1996 2015 first the degree of environmental pollution was calculated by constructing a comprehensive index system which was formulated using the entropy method based on six environmental indicators then a spatial panel regression model was also employed in order to estimate whether income inequality is likely to be a relevant factor in environmental deterioration in china the estimation results showed that using the index and spatial analysis techniques significant spatial positive agglomeration were found existing between chinese provinces in terms of their levels of environmental degradation the influencing factors estimation results substantiated the existence of an invert u shaped relation lending support to the environmental kuznets curve theory more importantly the study found that income inequality played a significant role in preventing environmental degradation suggesting that an appropriate level of income inequality over a delimited period is beneficial to improving environmental quality it should however also be emphasized that optimizing the country s income distribution is remains an important long term task for the chinese government other factors were found to exert different types and magnitudes of impacts on environmental pollution results showed that many factors for instance energy intensity the share of secondary industry population density and foreign direct investment contribute to environmental deterioration conversely our findings also indicate that rising urbanization levels can have a positive effect on environmental quality in addition no clear evidence was found to suggest that local government expenditure is related to environmental degradation

testing the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis across the u s evidence from panel mean group estimators abstract it is widely believed that greenhouse gases contribute to a warmer climate since global warming is a serious threat and greenhouse gas emissions are one of the main causes of it analyzing the effects of economic development on environment have great importance in this study the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is tested for the 50 u s states during the 1960 2010 period using recent panel data estimators that take cross sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity into account accordingly the cross sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity robust estimators augmented mean group amg and common correlated effects mean group estimator ccemg provide mixed results the amg estimator strongly validates the ekc hypothesis asserting that the ekc holds in 30 of the 50 states with turning points for income per capita lie between 1292 and 48597 on the contrary the ccemg estimator provides only weak evidence on the ekc hypothesis and the ekc holds only in 10 states with turning points between 2457 and 14603

an inquiry into power and participatory natural resource management decentralised environmental governance based on community participation is increasingly replacing top down natural resource management there is increasing awareness however that such mechanisms might fail to ensure effective participation by all stakeholders and be prone to producing and or perpetuating power inequalities against this backdrop we claim that power should be positioned at the centre of analyses of natural resource management in this paper we provide a taxonomy of positions to analyse participatory decision making in natural resource management we operationalise this framework to analyse two failures of participatory natural resource management in turkey focusing on reasons for failure and the role of power asymmetries our results are based on case studies comprising in depth interviews focus groups and a survey administered to 944 individuals we conclude that participatory mechanisms are highly unlikely to bring democratic and equitable outcomes unless power relations are addressed at both institutional and local levels copyright oxford university press

energy consumption practices of rural households in north china basic characteristics and potential for low carbon development reducing the climate impact of rural household energy consumption in china is complicated since it is bound up with deeply routinized daily practices and dependent from existing infrastructural systems of energy supply to assess the potential for low carbon development we first estimate the overall co2 emissions of rural households followed by a more in depth description and characterization of the different energy use practices within the households space heating turns out to be the largest emission source among domestic energy practices in north china we present lifestyle and context related factors that help to explain existing differences in domestic energy use practices of households the potential for low carbon development is discussed both at the demand side and the supply side at the demand side the use of more efficient technologies and cleaner energy sources for space heating seems to be a high potential measure for achieving low carbon households at the supply side the reduction of rural domestic co2 emissions could be effectively supported by making available to householders renewable and cleaner energy sources and technologies in order to be effective such low carbon energy options should take into account the income characteristics and lifestyles of rural householders

energy requirements of sydney households supporting the lifestyles of the populations of modern cities requires vast quantities of natural resources and leads to environmental stresses such as air and water pollution research into the metabolism of cities therefore aims at understanding the physical flows into within and out of cities with a view to reducing the use of resources and the environmental impacts one important physical indicator is energy use most studies on cities only consider direct or end user energy consumption since the function of cities is to serve the lives of their residents indirect energy use in cities or energy embodied in the consumption of goods and services by its residents can be regarded as being as important as direct energy use however physical models of cities are extremely complex and have difficulty in dealing with boundary issues and hence the indirect resource requirements in this paper we use input output analysis and detailed household expenditure data to yield comprehensive energy use breakdowns for the 14 statistical subdivisions of sydney multivariate regression and structural path analysis spa are used to interpret the results clear correlations can be drawn between energy use and income household size age and degree of urbanity the structural path analysis is used to demonstrate how significant differences in lifestyles between inner and outer areas of sydney leads to different energy use characteristics this final consumption based approach to analysing the energy requirements for households has important implications for measures aimed at reducing energy use which tend to only consider direct energy use d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

scrutinizing the direct rebound effect for french households using quantile regression and data from an original survey abstract this article develops a quantile regression model to measure the magnitude of the direct rebound effect for residential electricity demand based on micro level data from an original survey of a representative sample of 2356 french households we explore the rebound effect for different groups of residents traditionally debate has focused on decreased prices for energy services due to efficiency improvements and their effects on energy demand the methodological innovation provided by this paper is that it implements two theoretical estimation strategies i energy efficiency elasticity of the demand for energy services and ii price elasticity of the demand for energy services our findings reject the hypothesis of a backfire effect in the context of residential electricity use specifically based on energy efficiency elasticity we provide evidence of a rebound effect of between 72 and 86 but with substantial heterogeneity among consumption quantiles our results show that the direct rebound effect has critical relevance for energy efficiency policy in the face of energy invisibility in france

income growth and atmospheric pollution in spain an input output approach abstract the relationships between economic growth and environmental pressures are complex since the early nineties the debate on these relationships has been strongly influenced by the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis which states that during the first stage of economic development environmental pressures increase as per capita income increases but once a critical turning point has been reached these pressures diminish as income levels continue to increase however to date such a delinking between economic growth and emission levels has not happened for most atmospheric pollutants in spain the aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between income growth and nine atmospheric pollutants in spain in order to obtain empirical outcomes for this analysis we adopt an input output approach and use namea data for the nine pollutants first we undertake a structural decomposition analysis for the period 1995 2000 to estimate the contribution of various factors to changes in the levels of atmospheric emissions and second we estimate the emissions associated with the consumption patterns of different groups of households classified according to their level of expenditure

who emits most associations between socio economic factors and uk households home energy transport indirect and total co2 emissions abstract does the association between household characteristics and household co2 emissions differ for areas such as home energy transport and indirect emissions this question is policy relevant because distributional implications of mitigation policies may vary depending on the area of emissions that is targeted if specific types of households are likely to have higher emissions in some areas than in others so far this issue has not been examined in depth in the literature on household co2 emissions using a representative uk expenditure survey this paper compares how household characteristics like income household size education gender worklessness and rural or urban location differ in their association with all three areas as well as total emissions we find that these associations vary considerably across emission domains in particular whilst all types of emissions rise with income low income workless and elderly households are more likely to have high emissions from home energy than from other domains suggesting that they may be less affected by carbon taxes on transport or total emissions this demonstrates that fairness implications related to mitigation policies need to be examined for separate emission domains

how does income redistribution affect households material footprint abstract this paper presents a study of the evolution of spanish households material footprint for the period 2006 to 2013 the method proposed combines the multiregional input output model with spanish national data on household consumption according to social group material footprint has been affected by the 2008 economic crisis in relative terms the share of spanish households material footprint with respect to total material footprint decreased drastically from 70 7 in 2006 to 50 8 in 2011 this reduction can be mainly attributed to the construction sector crash 34 4 of the reduction is due to construction materials followed by biomass 29 metals 27 1 and fossil fuels 26 1 by type of household the material footprint exhibits a scale effect while consumption and income levels grow and this is accompanied by a global teleconnection effect which varies from 62 for biomass to 64 for metals to 82 for construction materials to 95 for fossil fuels given the context of increasing income inequality we perform one redistribution simulation from high to middle and low income households finding a material footprint increase in all cases the most materialized consumer basket is that corresponding to households with incomes between 1500 and 1999 euros above that income level the growing weight of expenditures on services reduces the use of materials importantly social income redistribution and environmental material footprint sustainability will become incompatible if responsibility is transferred only to households

the political economy of the paris agreement income inequality and climate policy abstract we empirically assess how both between country inequality and within country inequality relate to climate policy ambition as defined by ndc pledges of the paris agreement cop21 we exploit the difference between high and low ambition targets submitted by parties to construct a climate policy ambition index we find that both inequalities shape countries pledges first low income countries tend to be more ambitious in setting their pledges when external support is received second within country inequality is associated with i lower mitigation ambition in low and middle low income countries and with ii higher mitigation ambition although non statistically significant for upperhigh and high income countries our results are discussed in terms of i climate policy being a superior good in rich countries and ii elites benefiting from emitting economic activities in poorer countries

the impact of household consumption patterns on emissions in spain abstract the aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between household consumption patterns and pollution in the spanish economy the analysis was carried using a social accounting matrix sam for the spanish economy prepared for 1999 taking the final demand of households as the exogenous account in the sam framework and combining this with the information provided by the household budget continuous survey on income and consumption ine 1999 we analyse the pollution produced by both the economy and households in order to satisfy consumption requirements we also consider the effects of income inequality on expenditure levels establishing a link between income level consumption patterns propensity to consume and co2 emissions

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

the impact of information on environmental commodity valuation decisions a conceptual model is developed which provides insight into how information affects willingness to pay for environmental commodities a refutable hypothesis of the effects of a specific information type on the magnitude of willingness to pay for an environmental commodity is developed this hypothesis is tested using a contingent valuation method experiment results indicate that information affects willingness to pay in a theoretically plausible manner the results support the contention that information is important for accurate environmental commodity consumer valuations

would economic democracy decrease the amount of public bads the general argument of those who believe that economic democracy decreases the amount of public bads is that with economic democracy the people would make decisions rather than a small class of capitalists an attempt is made to evaluate and analyze this argument several possibilities emerge and the situation is found to be more subtle than implied by this popular argument copyright 1993 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

the impact of pollution charges on productivity growth in canadian brewing this article presents an econometric analysis of the productivity impact of pollution charges on firms in the canadian brewing industry we estimate a translog cost function that allows for differences between regulated and unregulated plants productivity is measured by the standard residual method the empirical work which is based on plant level data from a single industry suggests that pollution charges have a negative impact on productivity growth this however is not necessarily undesirable since accompanying these costs are definite benefits in terms of a cleaner environment

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

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

globalization and the connection of remote communities a review of household effects and their biodiversity implications abstract the remote regions of the world provide refuge to a disproportionate amount of the earth s biodiversity as globalization continues isolated human communities in these regions are increasingly connected to global market migration and technology networks we review the diffuse literature on the household effects of changing market access migration and technology adoption in remote regions and implications for native biodiversity market access affects biodiversity in remote communities through changes in household economics and social networks migration either to or from remote settlements affects biodiversity through changes in population remittances human capital and social networks finally we consider effects due to production public infrastructure and information and communication technologies there is much ambiguity surrounding these causal pathways and thus we also examine the roles of various ecological household community and institutional mediating factors in determining the impacts of global connection finally we explore the limitations of our current knowledge and research practices and propose directions for future work to address key uncertainties in theory and evidence as well as weaknesses in methodological approaches we recommend a broad and interdisciplinary mode of inquiry as the best means toward clarifying globalization s impacts on human settlements and the biodiversity harbored in the earth s remaining remote regions

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

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

impact of household consumption on co2 emissions danish household consumption increased by 58 over the period 1966 1992 while co2 emissions only increased by 7 using decomposition analysis we investigated the global co2 impact of danish household consumption from 1966 to 1992 our conclusion is that overall growth in private consumption but not changes in the composition of consumption is the key to understanding the increase in co2 emissions however the effect of growth in private consumption has been partly offset by substantial energy conservation in the energy supply and manufacturing sectors

does inequality affect environmental quality evidence from major japanese cities abstract this study investigates whether income inequality affects environmental degradation we use city level data in japan where local governments have limited authority and often use voluntary agreements with private firms we test the hypothesis that inequality weakens residents bargaining power over polluters and has a negative effect on environmental quality our results show that inequality negatively affected air quality in residential and commercial areas during the 1990s but not in industrial areas this evidence suggests that the inequality pollution relationship is not just a correlation but reflects a causal effect of residents bargaining power on environmental quality this implies that equal communities can pressure firms into accepting pollution prevention agreements

a household level environmental kuznets curve abstract richer households may create more vehicle emissions because they own more vehicles and drive more poorer households may pollute more because they use high polluting vintages and maintain them less well this paper uses 1993 california vehicle microdata to show that there is a kuznets u shaped hydrocarbon emissions relation

poverty and environmental degradation a review and analysis of the nexus abstract there is much controversy surrounding the poverty environmental degradation nexus the predominant school of thought argues that poverty is a major cause of environmental degradation and if policy makers want to address environmental issues then they must first address the poverty problem another school of thought argues that a direct link between poverty and environmental degradation is too simplistic and the nexus is governed by a complex web of factors in this paper a formal structure for analyzing the complex web of factors is formulated and used to review the existing literature on the links between poverty and the degradation of four natural resource sectors the analysis highlights the important role institutional and market failure in encouraging agents from various income groups to exhibit unsustainable activities which in turn forces some of the agents to fall into poverty another important factor is the role of conflicts between different agents income groups in the povertyenvironmental degradation nexus the analysis also highlights the presence of feedback loops between environmental degradation and poverty

media capture in a democracy the role of wealth concentration abstract since objective news coverage is vital to democracy captured media can seriously distort collective decisions the current paper develops a voting model where citizens are uncertain about the welfare effects induced by alternative policy options and derive information about those effects from the mass media the media might however secretly collude with interest groups in order to influence the public opinion in the case of voting over the level of a productivity enhancing public bad it is shown that an increase in the concentration of firm ownership makes the occurrence of media bias more likely although media bias is not always welfare worsening conditions for it to raise welfare are restrictive

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

domestic ghg emissions and the responsibility of households in spain looking for regional differences abstractthe aim of this article is to analyze the responsibilities of spanish households as final consumers for the generation of domestic greenhouse gases emissions ghg by region of residence distinguishing between nuts 1 and nuts 2 autonomous regions the motivation is the process of convergence experimented by spanish regions based on the strong economic growth experienced by the country until 2008 which could results in different emissions responsibilities because of different lifestyles and production structures we examine in depth the relationships between a representative household in each region and its patterns of consumption although we do find a relationship between per capita income and regional responsibility for pollution generation it is based on a demand scale effect which overlaps the effects of the regional consumption patterns thus in the richest regions madrid northeast east despite their having a less polluting pattern than other regions the level of per capita em

income inequality and carbon emissions in the united states a state level analysis 1997 2012 abstract this study investigates the relationship between u s state level co 2 emissions and two measures of income inequality the income share of the top 10 and the gini coefficient each of the inequality measures which focus on unique characteristics of income distributions is used to evaluate the arguments of different analytical approaches results of the longitudinal analysis for the 1997 to 2012 period indicate that state level emissions are positively associated with the income share of the top 10 while the effect of the gini coefficient on emissions is non significant the statistically significant relationship between co 2 emissions and the concentration of income among the top 10 is consistent with analytical approaches that focus on political economy dynamics and veblen effects which highlight the potential political and economic power and emulative influence of the wealthy the null effect of the gini coefficient is generally inconsistent with the marginal propensity to emit approach which posits that when incomes become more equally distributed the poor will increase their consumption of energy and other carbon intensive products as they move into the middle class

relief for the environment the importance of an increasingly unimportant industrial sector deindustrialization stagnant real incomes of production workers and increasing inequality are latter day features of many economies it is common to assume that such developments pressure policymakers to relax environmental standards however when heavily polluting industries become less important economically their political importance also tends to diminish consequently a regulator may increase the stringency of environmental policies like some other studies we find that declining industrial employment translates into stricter environmental standards in contrast to previous studies but consistent with our argument we find that greater income inequality is associated with policies that promote a cleaner environment jel q58 p16 j31 c23

income inequality and co2 emissions in the g7 1870 2014 evidence from non parametric modelling abstract we examine whether income inequality effected carbon emissions in what are now the world s wealthiest countries over the period 1870 2014 employing a non parametric panel estimation method with cross sectional and time varying coefficients we find that the relationship between income inequality and co2 emissions is highly non linear in terms of signs and significance the nonparametric coefficient function for income inequality is found to vary over the period 1870 2014 income inequality exhibits a significant positive effect from 1870 to 1880 and a significant negative impact from 1950 to 2000 on co2 emissions we also find that for extended periods between 1881 and 1949 and between 2000 and 2014 there is no significant relationship between the two variables

a household level environmental kuznets curve some recent evidence on transport emissions and income this paper uses detailed survey data to show no evidence of an environmental kuznets curve ekc for household transport emissions the evidence shows that richer households still do not choose to internalize the social cost of polluting by vehicle emissions

applying quantile regression and shapley decomposition to analyzing the determinants of household embedded carbon emissions evidence from urban china abstract as co2 emissions differ in households with different characteristics mitigation policies still address the contributions of these characteristics and their effects on specific households using a representative resident survey in urban china this paper compares how household characteristics differ in their associations with household embedded carbon emissions heces at different levels by quantile regression then this paper analyzes the contributions of these characteristics by shapley decomposition the findings include the following i household income is the most important contributor to the difference of heces and its positive effect increases as heces rise ii the use of wealth has different effects on heces because household housing ownership and deposits contribute little to heces but the positive effects of household car ownership contribute 25 8 iii young people and children will emit more heces than adults the employed emit more than persons who are unemployed or retired iv education increases heces overall but mainly at the low quantiles the negative effect of the marriage increases as heces rise v income car ownership marital status size and constitution of households with high heces should be addressed to reduce the inequality of heces indeed education on the low carbon concept is another way forward

european environmental taxes and charges recent experience issues and trends abstract the use of environmental taxes and charges in oecd countries increased by over 50 between 1987 and 1994 while revenues raised by environmental taxes and charges remain small relative to overall taxation they comprise a rising proportion in most european countries several european countries have either undertaken or are considering systematic shifts in taxes away from labour and onto the use of environmental resources potential negative effects on competitiveness and regressive distributional effects are the major cause of concern with regard to the introduction of environmental taxes a number of ways of mitigating such effects exist and have been implemented

is income inequality a driver for renewable energy consumption abstract although many initiatives have been made to research the effect of income inequality on environmental issues the question of whether income inequality affects renewable energy consumption hasn t been answered this gap in the literature raises an important question that needs to be answered by researchers can the income inequality affect renewable energy consumption as far as is known the study is the first attempt to discover this relationship therefore the impact of income inequality on renewable energy consumption is examined theoretically and empirically in 43 developed and developing countries for 2000 2015 in order to avoid the omitted variable problem economic environmental and institutional variables such as gdp per capita corruption co2 emissions and trade openness are included in the model the results demonstrate that the decline in income inequality will enhance renewable energy consumption in other words policymakers have the opportunity to reduce income inequality and environmental degradation at the same time similarly corruption control and raise co2 emissions will increase also renewable energy consumption otherwise economic determinants such as economic growth and trade openness have no meaningful effect on renewable energy consumption

the environment left wing political orientation and ecological economics the objectives of this commentary are twofold the first is to examine the relationship between a party s position within the left right political spectrum and its stance on environmental issues as stated in party manifestos the second is to examine the relationship between individuals ideological orientation and pro environmental beliefs attitudes and self reported behavior equality distributional concerns and market skepticism are typically regarded as defining factors of left wing political orientation our results suggest that left wing parties and individuals are also more pro environmental than their right wing counterparts ecological economics similarly embraces sustainability efficient resource allocation and equitable distribution and is skeptical towards the ability of unregulated markets to achieve these objectives the hypothesis is put forward that ecological economics is more likely to be supported by left wing parties and individuals

income inequality and carbon consumption evidence from environmental engel curves abstract i investigate the relationship between income inequality and the carbon dioxide co2 content of consumption i quantify the co2 content of household expenditure using input output analysis and estimate environmental engel curves eecs which describe the income emissions relationship using eecs for the united states between 1996 and 2009 i decompose the change in co2 over time and the distribution of emissions across households in both cases income is an important driver of household carbon finally i describe a potential equity pollution dilemma progressive income redistribution may raise the demand for aggregate greenhouse gas emissions i estimate that transfers raise emissions by 5 1 at the margin and by 2 3 under complete redistribution

power distribution the environment and public health a state level analysis abstract this paper examines relationships among power distribution the environment and public health by means of a cross sectional analysis of the 50 us states a measure of inter state variations in power distribution is derived from data on voter participation tax fairness medicaid access and educational attainment we develop and estimate a recursive model linking the distribution of power to environmental policy environmental stress and public health the results support the hypothesis that greater power inequality leads to weaker environmental policies which in turn lead to greater environmental degradation and to adverse public health outcomes

the shading and distancing of commerce when internalization is not enough abstract a political economy of degradation and of sustainability should account not only for the full range of production costs but the sources of those costs it should consider how the pursuit of wealth can deliberately or not lead to uncounted costs and unaccountable actors this article explores the conditions of cost generation and externalization especially those that are largely unintended and inadvertent it shows how the pursuit of wealth the expansion of markets the mobility of capital and the entanglements of production processes can lead to the unwitting generation and displacement of costs it analyzes competitive business strategy and patterns of production and consumption for their contribution to such costs business strategy and state policy tend to create a never ending search for frontiers however simulated and however unecological they may be the costs generated in those frontiers are a function of shading that is obscuring of costs and distancing the separation of production and consumption decisions both of which impede ecological and social feedback and create cognitive institutional and ethical lags between initial benefits and eventual full costs as distance increases along dimensions of geography culture bargaining power or agency negative feedback loops are severed stakeholders expand while decision making contracts environmental problems are displaced and shading and cost externalization increase the likelihood of sustainable resource use increases as distance is lowered as institutions locate decision authority in those who receive negative ecological feedback and who have the capacity and incentives to act on that feedback and as the burden of proof for economic interventions shifts to the interveners

economic inequality and the value of nature abstract understanding what influences the value of nature is crucial for informing environmental policy from a sustainability perspective economic valuation should not only seek to determine a society s willingness to pay for environmental goods to devise an efficient allocation of scarce resources but should also account for distributional effects to ensure justice yet how economic inequality affects the value of non market environmental goods remains understudied combining recently developed theoretical results with empirical evidence this commentary shows that more equal societies have a higher valuation for environmental public goods and that non market benefits of environmental policy accrue over proportionally to poorer households on this ground we discuss implications for environmental valuation management and policy making and identify a number of fruitful areas for future research we conclude that environmental valuation should explicitly account for economic inequality and that encompassing assessments of the distributional effects of environmental policies must consider the distribution of non market environmental benefits

adjustment toward peace an introduction abstract the recent experience of el salvador offers valuable lessons for economic policy in post conflictual transitions in the wake of a negotiated settlement to a civil war economic policy must support the adjustment toward peace in the short run policy must promote not only macroeconomic stabilization but also political stabilization this requires the mobilization of resources and the maintenance of political will for implementation of immediate peace related needs such as the reintegration of excombatants into civil society and the strengthening of democratic institutions long run policy objectives must encompass not only the attainment of macroeconomic balances but also equity that is balance in the distribution of income and wealth balanced investment in human natural and physical capital and democratization in the broad sense of a more balanced distribution of power in the end policies which fail to build on the crucial complementarities between peace and development are unlikely to achieve either goal

the trade off between income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions abstract we investigate the theoretically ambiguous link between income inequality and per capita carbon dioxide emissions using a panel data set that is substantially larger in both regional and temporal coverage than those used in the existing literature using an arguably superior group fixed effects estimator we find that the relationship between income inequality and per capita emissions depends on the level of income we show that for low and middle income economies higher income inequality is associated with lower carbon emissions while in upper middle income and high income economies higher income inequality increases per capita emissions the result is robust to the inclusion of plausible transmission variables

energy requirements of household consumption a case study of the netherlands this article describes the results of several research programmes that together aim at the development and application of methodologies that enable the study of long term environmental effects mainly related to the total household energy demand of household consumption in relation to other economic sectors this is usually described as the household metabolism approach in this article we use energy consumption and co2 emissions as proxies for long term impacts on the environment the major long term environmental effects of several hundred dutch household consumption categories have been determined by means of the hybrid energy analysis methodology total energy consumption and related co2 emission data have been calculated as a function of household income and family type past trends have been studied by a time series 1950 1990 analysis technical reduction potentials have been calculated for mid and long term scenarios it is concluded that the set of methodologies described form a useful tool for the analysis of unsustainable trends in household consumption patterns and associated energy requirements in the past and the present the results indicate that present trends lead towards unsustainability however reversal of these trends is feasible if this starts in the immediate future and if it is maintained for decades c 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

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

pollution regulation and abatement efforts evidence from china abstract this paper empirically tests pollution abatement efforts of chinese industries in response to pollution regulations especially the pollution charge instrument practiced in china for about 20 years the impacts of pollution regulation on abatement expenditures are examined for one thousand large and medium chinese industrial polluters the results show that plant level expenditures on end of pipe wastewater treatment are strongly responsive to the pollution charges the estimated elasticities of operation cost and new investment with respect to pollution price are 65 and 27 respectively other command and control regulatory approaches however are not found to have systematic and significant impacts on abatement expenditures

measuring development with inequality how should aggregate indicators of development account for inequality abstract the paper analyzes how inequality is accounted for in aggregate indicators of development and whether and how it should be used the motivation behind the study stems from the renewed interest in inequality in academia public discourse and in global policy first we argue that inequality should be considered when constructing development indicators the role of distribution in development is important both because people generally prefer lower inequality and inequality tends to have negative effects on development outcomes second we analyze how ten selected development indicators account for inequality in terms of justification type of inequality measure of inequality and method of incorporation and what the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches are we found considerable diversity especially for inequality measures and methods of incorporation as for the type of inequality inequality of opportunities is considered marginally and overlapping inequalities not at all increasing data availability opens the door for inclusion especially for the latter aspect as most indicators suffer from insufficient methodological substantiation we argue for increased clarity regarding why and how inequality is accounted for in development indicators the analysis is complemented by a detailed review of treatment of inequality by the analyzed indicators annex

inequality democracy and the environment a cross national analysis abstract this paper joins the debate on the relationship between inequality and the environment departing from the past contributions which focused either on the theories of environmental behavior or on economic interests this paper develops arguments about political choice mechanisms that help explain the linkages between inequality and national policymaking related to the establishment of protected areas a cross national analysis of the interactions between inequality democracy and the legal designation of protected areas in a global sample of 137 countries shows that ceteris paribus the effects of inequality vary depending on the strength of democracy in relatively democratic countries inequality is associated with less land in protected areas whereas in relatively undemocratic countries the reverse is true the highly significant effects of inequality undermine the democratic dividend in the arena of nature conservation

mechanisms explaining the impact of economic inequality on environmental deterioration abstract rising economic inequality often considered intrinsically harmful is increasingly being viewed as having a number of secondary impacts as well including impacts on health and economic growth the ongoing nature of today s environmental crisis also raises questions about inequality s role in environmental deterioration despite the large number of papers that have been written on this topic no theoretical or empirical consensus presently exists firstly our article identifies that authors conclusions in this area depend on their hypotheses regarding 1 the relationship between individual income and individual environmental pressure 2 the impact of inequality on the social norms that influence individual environmental pressure 3 the interests that social groups have in degrading or protecting the environment 4 how these interests play out in terms of political demands and 5 how these political demands translate into political decisions secondly the study shows that despite enabling a general test of the causal relationship between inequality and the environment the empirical methods utilised do not account for the full range of theoretical mechanisms in play hence the suggestion that a research programme be launched to conduct empirical studies of the five aforementioned hypotheses by applying a recursive approach

income inequality and the development of environmental technologies within rich countries a large dispersion in the capacity of generating environmental innovations appears correlated to the level of inequality previous works analyze the relationship between inequality and environmental quality in a static setting this paper builds a dynamic model more suitable to analyze technological externalities driven by the emergence of a new demand for green products under fairly general assumptions on technology and preferences we show that 1 the relationship between inequality and environmental innovation is highly non linear and crucially depends on per capita income 2 an excessive inequality harms the development of environmental technologies especially in rich countries key to our results is the fact that externalities generated by pioneer consumers of green products benefit the entire population only for relatively low income distances the empirical analysis robustly confirms our theoretical results that is whereas for rich countries inequality negatively affects the diffusion of innovations per capita income is paramount in poorer ones

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

taxpayer consumers and public pricing abstract public ownership may be viewed as a device to allocate control rights over a firm s prices in a democratic manner we analyze pricing when the public firm is controlled by majority voting and losses are covered by income taxation if median and mean income coincide marginal cost pricing is selected otherwise a ramsey style pricing rule obtains

the impact of banking and fringe banking regulation on the number of unbanked americans thirty five to 45 percent of low income american households do not possess a bank account this statistic coupled with claims of price gouging by check cashers has prompted government intervention i find that state legislation requiring banks to offer low cost accounts slightly decreases the number of low income minority unbanked households but only with a substantial lag caps on check cashing fees also lead to a small but more immediate reduction in the number of unbanked among this population because price caps may lead to a reduction in supply welfare effects are indeterminate

the nexus between income inequality and co2 emissions in turkey abstract environmental degradation and income inequality are two of the most important international debates that await immediate resolution despite that their interaction in the environmental economics literature has been very little analysis the aim of this study is to examine the impact of income distribution on the co2 emissions in turkey during 1984 2014 an autoregressive distributed lag model ardl test is employed to determine possible long term and short term nexus among the series the ardl test results show that the series are cointegrated and that income inequality has a positive effect on co2 emissions we also find that the environmental kuznets curve ekc is valid in turkey the toda yamamoto causality test denotes that gini coefficient is the granger cause of co2 emission the results show that deterioration in income distribution will reduce environmental quality in turkey which validates that political economy approach is valid in turkey study results can be an important guide for policymakers reducing income inequality for a new strategy in the fight against environmental problems may lead to a win win situation for turkey and the international community