# Cross-Country Polarisation in CO 2 Emissions Per Capita in the European Union: Changes and Explanatory Factors

Listed:
• Juan Duro

()

()

## Abstract

We analyse the degree of polarisation in the international distribution of CO 2 emissions per capita in the European Union. It is analytically relevant to examine the degree of instability inherent to a distribution and, in the analysed case, the likelihood that the distribution and its evolution will increase or decrease the chances of reaching an agreement on climate policy. Two approaches were used to measure polarisation: the endogenous approach, in which countries are grouped according to their similarity in terms of emissions, and the exogenous approach, in which countries are grouped geographically. Our findings indicate a clear decrease in polarisation since the mid-1990s, which can essentially be explained by the fact that the different groups have converged (i.e. antagonism among the CO 2 emitters has decreased) as the contribution of energy intensity to between-group differences has decreased. This lower degree of polarisation in CO 2 distribution suggests a situation more conducive to the possibility of reaching EU-wide agreements on the mitigation of CO 2 emissions. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

## Suggested Citation

• Juan Duro & Emilio Padilla, 2013. "Cross-Country Polarisation in CO 2 Emissions Per Capita in the European Union: Changes and Explanatory Factors," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 54(4), pages 571-591, April.
• Handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:54:y:2013:i:4:p:571-591
DOI: 10.1007/s10640-012-9607-x
as

File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10640-012-9607-x

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

## References listed on IDEAS

as
1. Peter C. B. Phillips & Donggyu Sul, 2007. "Transition Modeling and Econometric Convergence Tests," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(6), pages 1771-1855, November.
2. Hedenus, Fredrik & Azar, Christian, 2005. "Estimates of trends in global income and resource inequalities," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 351-364, November.
3. Shorrocks, A F, 1980. "The Class of Additively Decomposable Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(3), pages 613-625, April.
4. Wang, You-Qiang & Tsui, Kai-Yuen, 2000. " Polarization Orderings and New Classes of Polarization Indices," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 2(3), pages 349-363.
5. Bianchi, Marco, 1997. "Testing for Convergence: Evidence from Non-parametric Multimodality Tests," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(4), pages 393-409, July-Aug..
6. Esteban, Joan & Ray, Debraj, 1994. "On the Measurement of Polarization," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(4), pages 819-851, July.
7. Padilla, Emilio & Duro, Juan Antonio, 2013. "Explanatory factors of CO2 per capita emission inequality in the European Union," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1320-1328.
8. Duro, Juan Antonio & Padilla, Emilio, 2008. "Analysis of the international distribution of per capita CO2 emissions using the polarization concept," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 456-466, January.
9. Antonio Duro, Juan, 2010. "Decomposing international polarization of per capita CO2 emissions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(11), pages 6529-6533, November.
10. Wolfson, Michael C, 1994. "When Inequalities Diverge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 353-358, May.
11. X. Zhang & R. Kanbur, 2001. "What Difference Do Polarisation Measures Make? An Application to China," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 85-98.
12. Roberto Ezcurra & Pedro Pascual & Manuel Rapún, 2007. "Spatial disparities in the European Union: an analysis of regional polarization," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 41(2), pages 401-429, June.
13. Ezcurra, Roberto, 2007. "Is there cross-country convergence in carbon dioxide emissions?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 1363-1372, February.
14. Quah, Danny, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs," CEPR Discussion Papers 1586, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
15. Wolfson, Michael C, 1997. "Divergent Inequalities: Theory and Empirical Results," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 43(4), pages 401-421, December.
16. Duro, Juan Antonio & Padilla, Emilio, 2006. "International inequalities in per capita CO2 emissions: A decomposition methodology by Kaya factors," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 170-187, March.
17. Duro, Juan Antonio, 2005. "Another look to income polarization across countries," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 27(9), pages 1001-1007, December.
18. Joan Esteban & Carlos Gradín & Debraj Ray, 2007. "An Extension of a Measure of Polarization, with an application to the income distribution of five OECD countries," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 5(1), pages 1-19, April.
19. Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1984. "Inequality Decomposition by Population Subgroups," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1369-1385, November.
20. Quah, Danny T, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 27-59, March.
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. repec:eee:rensus:v:79:y:2017:i:c:p:9-14 is not listed on IDEAS
2. Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo & Juana Castillo & Mercedes Beltrán-Esteve, 2013. "A dynamic approach to measuring ecological-economic performance with directional distance functions: greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union," Working Papers 1304, Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad de Valencia.
3. Teixidó-Figueras, J. & Duro, J.A., 2014. "Spatial Polarization of the Ecological Footprint Distribution," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 93-106.
4. Padilla, Emilio & Duro, Juan Antonio, 2013. "Explanatory factors of CO2 per capita emission inequality in the European Union," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1320-1328.
5. Battisti, Michele & Delgado, Michael S. & Parmeter, Christopher F., 2015. "Evolution of the global distribution of carbon dioxide: A finite mixture analysis," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 31-52.
6. Adolfo Maza & José Villaverde & María Hierro, 2015. "Non- $$\hbox {CO}_2$$ CO 2 Generating Energy Shares in the World: Cross-Country Differences and Polarization," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 61(3), pages 319-343, July.

### Keywords

CO 2 emissions; Distribution of emissions; European Union; Mitigation agreements; Polarisation;

## 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:kap:enreec:v:54:y:2013:i:4:p:571-591. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Sonal Shukla) or (Rebekah McClure). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

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 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.

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

IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.