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

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

neoclassical growth the j curve for abatement and the inverted u curve for pollution abstract this paper reexamines the neoclassical environmental growth model of forster to gain insights into the dynamic relationships among pollution abatement effort and economic development whereas the model has heretofore been used to examine steady state levels of capital consumption and environmental quality it also provides a theoretical basis for recent empirical research on j curves for abatement effort and inverted u curves for pollution

is there an animal welfare kuznets curve abstract the concept of a kuznets curve has been applied to income inequality and to the environment the kuznets curve takes an inverted u shape with income or gdp on the x axis and environmental degradation or inequality on the y axis it is hypothesized here that an animal welfare kuznets curve may exist with harm to animals initially rising with economic growth followed by improvement in the treatment of animals after some peak value why an animal welfare kuznets curve might theoretically exist is explored empirical evidence supporting or refuting the existence of such a curve is also examined the evidence is both quantitative and qualitative in nature since some issues in welfare cannot be easily quantified the evidence and theoretical presentation explores multiple areas of concern to animals including animal agriculture the use of animals in laboratories companion animals pets and the fur industry the conclusion is that evidence is mixed with some measures indicating a turning point while other measures showing no sign of peaking improving animal welfare

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

transboundary externalities in the environmental transition hypothesis the environmental kuznets curve ekc is a hypothesis which implies that it is possible to grow out of environmental degradation most theoretical models of the ekc relation have not accounted for transboundary and intergenerational externalities nor have empirical studies provided evidence that validates an inverted u shaped relation between environmental degradation and economic growth for pollution problems where the effects are far displaced or are long delayed

a consumption based theory of the environmental kuznets curve abstract most theories about the inverted u relationship between pollution and income termed the environmental kuznets curve ekc are production side theories emphasizing pollution and abatement technologies production side theories are implicitly based on the assumption of low factor mobility and the absence of pollution as a variable in the utility function both assumptions are called into question by the empirical evidence of ekcs for i pollutants that are long lived and not easily shiftable and ii regional cross sections with free labor mobility hazardous waste sites are a prime example this paper develops a stylized model of the ekc based on perfect mobility of households and labor it represents the first attempt at developing a consumption side model of the ekc

the economics of dams dams provide a host of benefits to societies helping to balance variability in water availability with demand for multiple uses allowing power generation providing and enhancing recreation opportunities and offering protection against damaging floods yet dams are often controversial due to their high investment requirements unequal distributional effects and concerns over the irreparable harm they may cause to free flowing rivers and ecosystems this paper considers the economic case for such projects organized around a review of what we know about their value and impacts though heterogeneity across contexts is a common feature of interventions in many sectors we argue that it is particularly acute in the case of dams and that this creates difficulties for drawing general conclusions about their social value still evidence suggests that investment in additional surface water storage may not always be the best solution for addressing water scarcity furthermore a number of biases and blind spots exist in economic frameworks used to evaluate dams and these often challenge analysts ability to correctly identify which projects will be most attractive perhaps due to some of these perceived deficiencies policy makers do not appear to make much use of economic analyses for decision making about dams if progress is to be made in avoiding costly mistakes related to construction and removal of such infrastructures in the future economists need to improve the realism and methods underlying their analyses of the value of dams and offer more useful interpretations of the results that these approaches produce

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

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

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

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

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

time varying analysis of co2 emissions energy consumption and economic growth nexus statistical experience in next 11 countries this paper detects the direction of causality among carbon dioxide co2 emissions energy consumption and economic growth in next 11 countries for the period 1972 2013 changes in economic energy and environmental policies as well as regulatory and technological advancement over time cause changes in the relationship among the variables we use a novel approach i e time varying granger causality and find that economic growth is the cause of co2 emissions in bangladesh and egypt economic growth causes energy consumption in the philippines turkey and vietnam but the feedback effect exists between energy consumption and economic growth in south korea in the cases of indonesia and turkey we find the unidirectional time varying granger causality running from economic growth to co2 emissions thus validates the existence of the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis which indicates that economic growth is achievable at the minimal cost of environment the paper gives new insights for policy makers to attain sustainable economic growth while maintaining long run environmental quality

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

trade and the environment from a southern perspective the relationship between free trade and the environment is one of the main issues of contention between environmental and ecological economics environmental economics assumes a positive relationship between free trade economic growth and environmental policies environmental externalities may cause important damage however trade is not to be blamed for this instead the fault lies with policy inadequacies at the national level on the other hand some ecological economists criticise the assumptions of environmental economics especially the immobility of production factors and the positive correlation between income and environmental quality they plead for measures to prevent deterioration of northern environmental standards in a race to the bottom due to ecological dumping from the south in this paper we argue that neither environmental economics nor northern ecological economics take into account the structural conditions determining the international trade system based on some new empirical evidence on material flows we stress the notion of environmental cost shifting if physical and political ecology perspectives are adopted a southern approach to the trade and environment issue may arise 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

economic models for the environmental kuznets curve a survey abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc refers to an inverted u shaped relationship between some pollutant level and per capita income i e the environmental quality deteriorates at early stages of economic growth and subsequently improves at a later stage since the early 1990s a considerable number of empirical studies have been conducted on the ekc and although there is no conclusive proof it has been recognized that the ekc emerges as an empirical regularity however some recent studies cast doubt on the concept and methodology of empirical results and evidence of the existence of the ekc has been questioned in fact how economic growth affects the environmental quality i e the shape of the ekc is still controversial in order to identify the actual relationship between the environmental quality and economic growth it is essential to develop economic models from various points of view this paper overviews the current stage of theoretical models that explain such relationship

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

measuring emissions avoided by international trade accounting for price differences abstract net emissions avoided by trade nea are the difference between the pollution that would have been produced in a country if it had not exported any products and all the imports required to satisfy its domestic demand had been produced internally and its actual emissions the domestic technology assumption dta applied to an input output model is the appropriate method to estimate the nea the usual implementation of the dta involves that the country analyzed should produce a quantity of products equivalent to the monetary value of the imports required to satisfy its final demand i e monetary dta however due to price differences the same physical quantity of goods in different countries could have a different monetary value and the estimation of the nea would be biased we show that a physical dta focused on the pollution to produce domestically the imports measured in physical units would be a better approach we have applied both methodologies to analyze greenhouse gas emissions in spain 1995 2007 both methodologies show that spain is avoiding emissions through trade however the nea increases up to three times when applying the physical dta showing that results from the monetary dta are biased by price differences

managerial attention and worker performance we present a novel theory of the employment relationship a manager can invest in attention technology to recognize good worker performance the technology may break and is costly to replace we show that as time passes without recognition the worker s belief about the manager s technology worsens and his effort declines the manager responds by investing but this investment is insufficient to stop the decline in effort and eventually becomes decreasing the relationship therefore continues deteriorating and a return to high performance becomes increasingly unlikely these deteriorating dynamics do not arise when recognition is of bad performance or independent of effort

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

the effects of financial development economic growth coal consumption and trade openness on co2 emissions in south africa abstract this paper explores the effects of financial development economic growth coal consumption and trade openness on environmental performance using time series data over the period 1965 2008 in case of south africa the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration has been used to test the long run relationship among the variables while short run dynamics have been investigated by applying error correction method ecm the unit root properties of the variables are examined by applying saikkonen and lutkepohl 2002 econometric theory 18 313 348 structural break unit root test our findings confirmed long run relationship among the variables results showed that a rise in economic growth increases energy emissions while financial development reduces it coal consumption has significant contribution to deteriorate environment in south african economy trade openness improves environmental quality by reducing the growth of energy pollutants our empirical results also verified the existence of environmental kuznets curve this paper opens up new insights for south african economy to sustain economic growth by controlling environment from degrdation through efficient use of energy

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

an empirical study of 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

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

an overlapping generations model of growth and the environment this article analyzes the potential conflict between economic growth and the maintenance of environmental quality in an overlapping generations model short lived individuals make decisions which have long lasting effects on both factor productivity and the environment the model provides a theoretical explanation of observed correlations between environmental quality and income whereby economic growth is associated first with declines then improvements in environmental quality it suggests circumstances in which multiple pareto ranked steady state equilibria may arise and in which sustained growth of both capital and environmental quality may occur overmaintenance of the environment analogous to dynamically inefficient overaccumulation of capital may emerge copyright 1994 by royal economic society

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

debt constrained asset markets we develop a theory of general equilibrium with endogenous debt limits in the form of individual rationality constraints similar to those in the dynamic consistency literature if an agent defaults on a contract he can be excluded from future contingent claims markets trading and can have his assets seized he cannot be excluded from spot markets trading however and he has some private endowments that cannot be seized all information is publicly held and common knowledge and there is a complete set of contingent claims markets since there is complete information an agent cannot enter into a contract in which he would have an incentive to default in some state in general there is only partial insurance variations in consumption may be imperfectly correlated across agents interest rates may be lower than they would be without constraints and equilibria may be pareto ranked

on the north south trade in the americas and its ecological asymmetries there has been a long and intensive debate within the scientific community about the role of international trade in the development of countries during the last decades the focus of attention has moved from the pure economic level to the environmental aspects of international trade establishing a simplified system of north south trade for one reference period 2003 this paper attempts to test empirically the extent of potential asymmetries with regard to extracted material flows and contrasts the results with the economic benefits from trade in terms of value added the south is thereby represented by a selection of latin american countries brazil chile colombia ecuador and mexico the north comprises one of their main commercial partners the united states at the methodological level a multi regional input output analysis is used as the tool of investigation results generally support the hypothesis that the south was feeding the north s societal metabolism south north material exports were 1 6 times larger than north south material exports resulting in a net deficit for the south of 324 million tons moreover material intensity of exported commodities from the south was twice as high as that from the north it is worth highlighting however that part of the north south hypothesis fails for the sample of countries since the larger part of the economic surplus has remained in the south contrarily to what would have been expected