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The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve

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  • David I. Stern

    () (Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180-3590, USA)

Abstract

This paper chronicles the story of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). The EKC proposes that indicators of environmental degradation first rise, and then fall with increasing income per capita. However, recent evidence shows that developing countries are addressing environmental issues, sometimes adopting developed country standards with a short time lag and sometimes performing better than some wealthy countries, and that the EKC results have a very flimsy statistical foundation. A new generation of decomposition models can help disentangle the true relations between development and the environment.

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Paper provided by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Department of Economics in its series Rensselaer Working Papers in Economics with number 0302.

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Date of creation: Oct 2003
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Handle: RePEc:rpi:rpiwpe:0302

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  1. Conserving Places and Helping People
    by sense.sustainability@gmail.com (Jisung Park) in Sense and Sustainability on 2012-04-16 20:12:05

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