IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_1699.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economic, Demographic and Political Determinants of Pollution Reassessed: A Sensitivity Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Gassebner
  • Michael Lamla
  • Jan-Egbert Sturm

Abstract

Recent literature proposes many variables as significant determinants of pollution. This paper gives an overview of this literature and asks which of these factors have an empirically robust impact on water and air pollution, i.e. do not depend upon the conditioning information set. For this, we apply Extreme Bound Analysis (EBA) on a panel of 208 countries covering the period 1960–2001. We find supportive evidence on the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve. Furthermore, mainly demographic variables and variables capturing the economic structure of a country contribute in explaining air and water pollution.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Gassebner & Michael Lamla & Jan-Egbert Sturm, 2006. "Economic, Demographic and Political Determinants of Pollution Reassessed: A Sensitivity Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 1699, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1699
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp1699.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jan- Sturm & Jakob de Haan, 2005. "Determinants of long-term growth: New results applying robust estimation and extreme bounds analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 597-617, October.
    2. Alberto Alesina & Dani Rodrik, 1994. "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 465-490.
    3. Martin Gassebner & Noel Gaston & Michael J Lamla, 2008. "Relief For The Environment? The Importance Of An Increasingly Unimportant Industrial Sector," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 46(2), pages 160-178, April.
    4. Holtz-Eakin, Douglas & Selden, Thomas M., 1995. "Stoking the fires? CO2 emissions and economic growth," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 85-101, May.
    5. William T. Harbaugh & Arik Levinson & David Molloy Wilson, 2002. "Reexamining The Empirical Evidence For An Environmental Kuznets Curve," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(3), pages 541-551, August.
    6. Stern, David I. & Common, Michael S., 2001. "Is There an Environmental Kuznets Curve for Sulfur?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 162-178, March.
    7. Daniel L. Millimet & John A. List & Thanasis Stengos, 2003. "The Environmental Kuznets Curve: Real Progress or Misspecified Models?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 1038-1047, November.
    8. Lipset, Seymour Martin, 1959. "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy1," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(1), pages 69-105, March.
    9. Neumayer, Eric, 2004. "The environment, left-wing political orientation and ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3-4), pages 167-175, December.
    10. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    11. Grossman, G.M & Krueger, A.B., 1991. "Environmental Impacts of a North American Free Trade Agreement," Papers 158, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Public and International Affairs.
    12. Gallup, John & Sachs, Jeffrey, 1999. "Geography and Economic Development," Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) Papers 294434, Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government.
    13. Damania, Richard & Fredriksson, Per G. & List, John A., 2003. "Trade liberalization, corruption, and environmental policy formation: theory and evidence," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 490-512, November.
    14. Chimeli, Ariaster B. & Braden, John B., 2005. "Total factor productivity and the environmental Kuznets curve," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 366-380, March.
    15. Selden Thomas M. & Song Daqing, 1994. "Environmental Quality and Development: Is There a Kuznets Curve for Air Pollution Emissions?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 147-162, September.
    16. Leamer, Edward E, 1983. "Let's Take the Con Out of Econometrics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 31-43, March.
    17. Gallup, J.L. & Sachs, J.D. & Mullinger, A., 1999. "Geography and Economic Development," Papers 1, Chicago - Graduate School of Business.
    18. Adam B. Jaffe et al., 1995. "Environmental Regulation and the Competitiveness of U.S. Manufacturing: What Does the Evidence Tell Us?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 132-163, March.
    19. Xavier Sala-I-Martin & Gernot Doppelhofer & Ronald I. Miller, 2004. "Determinants of Long-Term Growth: A Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE) Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 813-835, September.
    20. Gene M. Grossman & Alan B. Krueger, 1995. "Economic Growth and the Environment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(2), pages 353-377.
    21. Jeffrey A. Frankel & Andrew K. Rose, 2005. "Is Trade Good or Bad for the Environment? Sorting Out the Causality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(1), pages 85-91, February.
    22. Cole, Matthew A., 2004. "Trade, the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental Kuznets curve: examining the linkages," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 71-81, January.
    23. Matthew A. Cole & Eric Neumayer, 2003. "Examining the Impact of Demographic Factors On Air Pollution," Labor and Demography 0312005, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 13 May 2004.
    24. Josh Ederington & Arik Levinson & Jenny Minier, 2005. "Footloose and Pollution-Free," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(1), pages 92-99, February.
    25. Frank, Murray & Gencay, Ramazan & Stengos, Thanasis, 1988. "International chaos?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1569-1584, October.
    26. Lee, Tae-Hwy & White, Halbert & Granger, Clive W. J., 1993. "Testing for neglected nonlinearity in time series models : A comparison of neural network methods and alternative tests," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 269-290, April.
    27. Temple, Jonathan, 2000. "Growth Regressions and What the Textbooks Don't Tell You," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(3), pages 181-205, July.
    28. Arrow, Kenneth & Bolin, Bert & Costanza, Robert & Dasgupta, Partha & Folke, Carl & Holling, C.S. & Jansson, Bengt-Owe & Levin, Simon & Mäler, Karl-Göran & Perrings, Charles & Pimentel, David, 1996. "Economic growth, carrying capacity, and the environment," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 104-110, February.
    29. Neumayer, Eric, 2003. "Are left-wing party strength and corporatism good for the environment? Evidence from panel analysis of air pollution in OECD countries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 203-220, June.
    30. John Luke Gallup & Jeffrey D. Sachs & Andrew Mellinger, 1999. "Geography and Economic Development," CID Working Papers 1, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    31. Cassou, Steven P. & Hamilton, Stephen F., 2004. "The transition from dirty to clean industries: optimal fiscal policy and the environmental Kuznets curve," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 1050-1077, November.
    32. Dinda, Soumyananda, 2004. "Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: A Survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 431-455, August.
    33. Levine, Ross & Renelt, David, 1992. "A Sensitivity Analysis of Cross-Country Growth Regressions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 942-963, September.
    34. Carlsson, Fredrik & Lundström, Susanna, 2000. "The Effects of Economic and Political Freedom on CO2 Emissions," Working Papers in Economics 29, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics, revised 21 Feb 2003.
    35. Revesz, Richard L. & Stavins, Robert N., 2007. "Environmental Law," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 499-589, Elsevier.
    36. Jakob de Haan & Jan-Egbert Sturm, 2005. "Determinants of Long-term Growth: New Results Applying Roboust Estimation and Extreme Bounds," TWI Research Paper Series 12, Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz.
    37. Shafik, Nemat, 1994. "Economic Development and Environmental Quality: An Econometric Analysis," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 46(0), pages 757-773, Supplemen.
    38. Gallup, John L. & Sachs, Jeffrey D. & Mellinger, Andrew, "undated". "Geography and Economic Development," Instructional Stata datasets for econometrics geodata, Boston College Department of Economics.
    39. Moomaw, William R. & Unruh, Gregory C., 1997. "Are environmental Kuznets curves misleading us? The case of CO2 emissions," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(4), pages 451-463, November.
    40. Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1997. "I Just Ran Two Million Regressions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 178-183, May.
    41. Cole, Matthew A. & Elliott, Robert J. R., 2003. "Determining the trade-environment composition effect: the role of capital, labor and environmental regulations," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 363-383, November.
    42. McAusland, Carol, 2003. "Voting for pollution policy: the importance of income inequality and openness to trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 425-451, December.
    43. Thursby, Jerry G, 1982. "Misspecification, Heteroscedasticity, and the Chow and Goldfeld-Quandt Tests," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 64(2), pages 314-321, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. C. Hopp & A. Dreher, 2013. "Do differences in institutional and legal environments explain cross-country variations in IPO underpricing?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(4), pages 435-454, February.
    2. Fuchs, Andreas & Dreher, Axel & Nunnenkamp, Peter, 2014. "Determinants of Donor Generosity: A Survey of the Aid Budget Literature," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 172-199.
    3. Bruce Morley, 2012. "Empirical evidence on the effectiveness of environmental taxes," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(18), pages 1817-1820, December.
    4. Nguyen-Van, Phu, 2010. "Energy consumption and income: A semiparametric panel data analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 557-563, May.
    5. Lee, Chien-Chiang & Chiu, Yi-Bin & Sun, Chia-Hung, 2010. "The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for water pollution: Do regions matter?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 12-23, January.
    6. Cho, Seo-Young & Dreher, Axel & Neumayer, Eric, 2013. "Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 67-82.
    7. repec:eid:wpaper:02/10 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Lamla, Michael J., 2009. "Long-run determinants of pollution: A robustness analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 135-144, November.
    9. Adewuyi, Adeolu O., 2016. "Effects of public and private expenditures on environmental pollution: A dynamic heterogeneous panel data analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 489-506.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martin Gassebner & Michael Lamla & Jan-Egbert Sturm, 2006. "Economic, demographic and political determinants of pollution reassessed," KOF Working papers 06-129, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    2. Lamla, Michael J., 2009. "Long-run determinants of pollution: A robustness analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 135-144, November.
    3. Martin Gassebner & Noel Gaston & Michael J Lamla, 2008. "Relief For The Environment? The Importance Of An Increasingly Unimportant Industrial Sector," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 46(2), pages 160-178, April.
    4. Onafowora, Olugbenga A. & Owoye, Oluwole, 2014. "Bounds testing approach to analysis of the environment Kuznets curve hypothesis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 47-62.
    5. Stern, David I., 2004. "The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1419-1439, August.
    6. Fernández-Amador, Octavio & Francois, Joseph F. & Oberdabernig, Doris A. & Tomberger, Patrick, 2017. "Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Economic Growth: An Assessment Based on Production and Consumption Emission Inventories," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 269-279.
    7. Jie He, 2007. "Is the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis valid for developing countries? A survey," Cahiers de recherche 07-03, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    8. Roxana Pincheira & Felipe Zuniga, 2021. "Environmental Kuznets curve bibliographic map: a systematic literature review," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(S1), pages 1931-1956, April.
    9. Sabuj Kumar Mandal & Devleena Chakravarty, 2017. "Role of energy in estimating turning point of Environmental Kuznets Curve: an econometric analysis of the existing studies," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 19(2), pages 387-401, October.
    10. He, Jie & Richard, Patrick, 2010. "Environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 in Canada," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1083-1093, March.
    11. Dinda, Soumyananda, 2004. "Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: A Survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 431-455, August.
    12. Aslanidis Nektarios, 2009. "Environmental Kuznets curves for carbon emissions: A critical survey," wp.comunite 0051, Department of Communication, University of Teramo.
    13. Matthew A. Cole & Andrea Lucchesi, 2014. "Economic growth and the environment," Chapters, in: Giles Atkinson & Simon Dietz & Eric Neumayer & Matthew Agarwala (ed.), Handbook of Sustainable Development, chapter 16, pages 252-266, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Balsalobre-Lorente, Daniel & Shahbaz, Muhammad & Roubaud, David & Farhani, Sahbi, 2018. "How economic growth, renewable electricity and natural resources contribute to CO2 emissions?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 356-367.
    15. Yang, Haisheng & He, Jie & Chen, Shaoling, 2015. "The fragility of the Environmental Kuznets Curve: Revisiting the hypothesis with Chinese data via an “Extreme Bound Analysis”," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 41-58.
    16. Mikkel Bennedsen & Eric Hillebrand & Sebastian Jensen, 2022. "A Neural Network Approach to the Environmental Kuznets Curve," CREATES Research Papers 2022-09, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    17. He, Jie & Wang, Hua, 2012. "Economic structure, development policy and environmental quality: An empirical analysis of environmental Kuznets curves with Chinese municipal data," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 49-59.
    18. Pandelis Mitsis, 2012. "Is there an Environmental Kuznets Curve in the Carbon Dioxide Emissions?," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 16-2012, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    19. Stern, David I., 2014. "The Environmental Kuznets Curve: A Primer," Working Papers 249424, Australian National University, Centre for Climate Economics & Policy.
    20. Nguyen Van, Phu & Azomahou, Theophile, 2007. "Nonlinearities and heterogeneity in environmental quality: An empirical analysis of deforestation," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 291-309, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    pollution; environment; sensitivity analysis; environmental Kuznets curve;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1699. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.