Open AccessPosted Content
Economic Growth and the Environment
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
The relationship between economic growth and environmental quality is not fixed along a country's development path and it may change as a country reaches a level of income at which people can demand and afford a more efficient infrastructure and a cleaner environment as discussed by the authors.Abstract:
Will the world be able to sustain economic growth indefinitely without running into resource constraints or despoiling the environment beyond repair? What is the relationship between steadily increasing incomes and environmental quality? This paper builds on the author's earlier work (1993), in which he argued that the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality – whether inverse or direct -- is not fixed along a country's development path. Indeed, he hypothesized, it may change as a country reaches a level of income at which people can demand and afford a more efficient infrastructure and a cleaner environment. This implied inverted-U relationship between environmental degradation and economic growth came to be known as the "Environmental Kuznets Curve," by analogy with the income-inequality relationship postulated by Kuznets (1965, 1966). The objective of this paper is to critically review, synthesize and interpret the literature on the relationship between economic growth and environment. This literature has followed two distinct but related strands of research: an empirical strand of ad hoc specifications and estimations of a reduced form equation, relating an environmental impact indicator to income per capita; and a theoretical strand of macroeconomic models of interaction between environmental degradation and economic growth, including optimal growth, endogenous growth and overlapping generations models. The author concludes that the macroeconomic models generally support the empirical findings of the Environmental Kuznets Curve literature. He suggests further empirical investigation related to the assumption of additive separability, as well as development of additional macroeconomic models that allow for a more realistic role for government.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Does Trade Liberalization Harm the Environment? A New Test
TL;DR: In this article, a simultaneous-equations system is derived which incorporates multiple effects of trade liberalization on the environment, and the results suggest that freer trade aggravates environmental damage via the terms of trade, but mitigates it via income growth.
Journal ArticleDOI
National environmental performance: an empirical analysis of policy results and determinants
Daniel C. Esty,Michael E. Porter +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify empirically the factors that drive environmental performance as measured by levels of urban particulates and sulfur dioxide and energy use per unit of GDP and find that strong environmental performance appears to be positively correlated with competitiveness, putting into question the presumed trade-off between economic progress and environmental gains.
Journal ArticleDOI
Is There Really a Green Paradox
TL;DR: The Green Paradox as discussed by the authors states that, in the absence of a tax on CO2 emissions, subsidizing a renewable backstop such as solar or wind energy brings forward the date at which fossil fuels become exhausted and consequently global warming is aggravated.
Posted Content
The Effect of Pollution on Labor Supply: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Mexico City
Rema Hanna,Paulina Oliva +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors exploit exogenous variation in pollution due to the closure of a large refinery in Mexico City to understand how pollution impacts labor supply and find that a one percent increase in sulfur dioxide results in a 0.61 percent decrease in the hours worked.
Journal ArticleDOI
Energy Innovations-GHG Emissions Nexus: Fresh Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries
TL;DR: This article explored the impact of improvements in energy research development (ERD) on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for 28 OECD countries over the period of 1990-2014.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
The Tragedy of the Commons
TL;DR: The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
The mechanics of economic development
Abstract: This paper considers the prospects for constructing a neoclassical theory of growth and international trade that is consistent with some of the main features of economic development. Three models are considered and compared to evidence: a model emphasizing physical capital accumulation and technological change, a model emphasizing human capital accumulation through schooling, and a model emphasizing specialized human capital accumulation through learning-by-doing.
Journal ArticleDOI
Increasing Returns and Long-Run Growth
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a fully specified model of long-run growth in which knowledge is assumed to be an input in production that has increasing marginal productivity, which is essentially a competitive equilibrium model with endogenous technological change.
Journal ArticleDOI
On the mechanics of economic development
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider the prospects for constructing a neoclassical theory of growth and international trade that is consistent with some of the main features of economic development, and compare three models and compared to evidence.
Book
Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
TL;DR: In this paper, an institutional approach to the study of self-organization and self-governance in CPR situations is presented, along with a framework for analysis of selforganizing and selfgoverning CPRs.