IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jpamgt/v27y2008i1p7-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Debt, democratization, and development in Latin America: How policy can affect global warming

Author

Listed:
  • René W. Aubourg

    (American University)

  • David H. Good

    (Indiana University)

  • Kerry Krutilla

    (Indiana University)

Abstract

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis conjectures a nonlinear relationship between pollution and economic growth, such that pollution per capita initially increases as countries economically develop, but then reaches a maximum point before ultimately declining. Much of the EKC literature has focused on testing this basic hypothesis and, in studies that find evidence of an EKC, estimating the “turning point” level of development at which the per capita pollution-growth relationship changes sign. This approach has not emphasized the policy relevance of specification issues or the potential role of policy variables. This research explores a modified EKC specification which conditions the pollution-growth relationship on a country's level of debt and degree of democratization. These variables turn out to be significant, implying that different political and economic contexts can shift EKCs and their turning points. These findings suggest that policies to relieve debt burdens and institute political reform, in addition to their usual justifications, also could be used as a strategy to reduce carbon emissions from developing countries. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Suggested Citation

  • René W. Aubourg & David H. Good & Kerry Krutilla, 2008. "Debt, democratization, and development in Latin America: How policy can affect global warming," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 7-19.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jpamgt:v:27:y:2008:i:1:p:7-19
    DOI: 10.1002/pam.20304
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/pam.20304
    File Function: Link to full text; subscription required
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/pam.20304?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Cole, M.A. & Rayner, A.J. & Bates, J.M., 1997. "The environmental Kuznets curve: an empirical analysis," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(4), pages 401-416, November.
    3. Barro, Robert J, 1996. "Democracy and Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 1-27, March.
    4. Marzio Galeotti & Alessandro Lanza, 1999. "Desperately Seeking (Environmental) Kuznets," Working Papers 1999.2, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    5. Mr. Alun H. Thomas, 2006. "Do Debt-Service Savings and Grants Boost Social Expenditures?," IMF Working Papers 2006/180, International Monetary Fund.
    6. 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.
    7. Galeotti, Marzio & Lanza, Alessandro & Pauli, Francesco, 2006. "Reassessing the environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 emissions: A robustness exercise," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 152-163, April.
    8. Boyd Roy & Krutilla Kerry & Viscusi W. Kip, 1995. "Energy Taxation as a Policy Instrument to Reduce CO2 Emissions: A Net Benefit Analysis," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 1-24, July.
    9. Richmond, Amy K. & Kaufmann, Robert K., 2006. "Is there a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and/or carbon emissions?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 176-189, February.
    10. repec:cdl:ucsbec:11-99 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Deacon, Robert, 1999. "The Political Economy of Environment-Development Relationships: A Preliminary Framework," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt8h33b5c0, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    12. Dinda, Soumyananda, 2004. "Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: A Survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 431-455, August.
    13. Shafik, Nemat, 1994. "Economic Development and Environmental Quality: An Econometric Analysis," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 46(0), pages 757-773, Supplemen.
    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. Tian Zhao & Zhixin Liu, 2022. "Drivers of CO 2 Emissions: A Debt Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(3), pages 1-18, February.
    2. Abid Rashid Gill & Sallahuddin Hassan & K Kuperan Viswanathan, 2019. "Is democracy enough to get early turn of the environmental Kuznets curve in ASEAN countries?," Energy & Environment, , vol. 30(8), pages 1491-1505, December.
    3. Jale Tosun & Christoph Knill, 2011. "The Differential Impact of Economic Integration on Environmental Policy," Chapters, in: Miroslav N. Jovanović (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Integration, Volume III, chapter 12, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Christoph Knill & Kai Schulze & Jale Tosun, 2012. "Regulatory policy outputs and impacts: Exploring a complex relationship," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(4), pages 427-444, December.
    5. Leitão, João & Ferreira, Joaquim & Santibanez-González, Ernesto, 2022. "New insights into decoupling economic growth, technological progress and carbon dioxide emissions: Evidence from 40 countries," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    6. Nikolaos Zirogiannis & Kerry Krutilla & Yorghos Tripodis & Kathryn Fledderman, 2019. "Human Development Over Time: An Empirical Comparison of a Dynamic Index and the Standard HDI," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 142(2), pages 773-798, April.

    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. Sebri, Maamar, 2009. "La Zone Méditerranéenne Face à la Pollution de L’air : Une Investigation Econométrique [The Mediterranean Zone in front of Air pollution: an Econometric Investigation]," MPRA Paper 32382, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Tetsuya Tsurumi & Shunsuke Managi, 2010. "Decomposition of the environmental Kuznets curve: scale, technique, and composition effects," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 11(1), pages 19-36, February.
    3. Cristian Barra & Roberto Zotti, 2018. "Investigating the non-linearity between national income and environmental pollution: international evidence of Kuznets curve," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 20(1), pages 179-210, January.
    4. Miguel Rodríguez & Yolanda Pena-Boquete, 2013. "Mishandling carbon intensities," Working Papers 1302, Universidade de Vigo, Departamento de Economía Aplicada.
    5. Barra, Cristian & Zotti, Roberto, 2016. "Investigating the impact of national income on environmental pollution. International evidence," MPRA Paper 74149, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Muhammad Shahbaz & Avik Sinha, 2019. "Environmental Kuznets curve for CO2emissions: a literature survey," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 46(1), pages 106-168, January.
    7. Yin, Jianhua & Zheng, Mingzheng & Chen, Jian, 2015. "The effects of environmental regulation and technical progress on CO2 Kuznets curve: An evidence from China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 97-108.
    8. Tiba, Sofien & Omri, Anis, 2017. "Literature survey on the relationships between energy, environment and economic growth," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 1129-1146.
    9. Di Vita, Giuseppe, 2008. "Differences in pollution levels among civil law countries: A possible interpretation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 3774-3786, October.
    10. Aslanidis, Nektarios, 2009. "Environmental Kuznets Curves for Carbon Emissions: A Critical Survey," Working Papers 2072/15847, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    11. Lisa Gianmoena & Vicente Rios, 2018. "The Determinants of CO2 Emissions Differentials with Cross-Country Interaction Effects: A Dynamic Spatial Panel Data Bayesian Model Averaging Approach," Discussion Papers 2018/234, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    12. Aslanidis Nektarios, 2009. "Environmental Kuznets curves for carbon emissions: A critical survey," wp.comunite 0051, Department of Communication, University of Teramo.
    13. Borghesi, Simone & Vercelli, Alessandro, 2010. "Greenhouse gas emissions and the energy system: decomposition analysis and the environmental Kuznets curve," MPRA Paper 27438, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Massimiliano Mazzanti & Antonio Musolesi & Roberto Zoboli, 2006. "A Bayesian Approach to the Estimation of Environmental Kuznets Curves for CO2 Emissions," Working Papers 2006.121, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    15. 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.
    16. Nektarios Aslanidis, 2009. "Environmental Kuznets Curves for Carbon Emissions: A Critical Survey," Working Papers 2009.75, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    17. Romero-Avila, Diego, 2008. "Questioning the empirical basis of the environmental Kuznets curve for CO2: New evidence from a panel stationarity test robust to multiple breaks and cross-dependence," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 559-574, January.
    18. Jean-Thomas Bernard & Michael Gavin & Lynda Khalaf & Marcel Voia, 2015. "Environmental Kuznets Curve: Tipping Points, Uncertainty and Weak Identification," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 60(2), pages 285-315, February.
    19. 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.
    20. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Sinha, Avik, 2019. "Environmental Kuznets Curve for CO2 emission: A survey of empirical literature," MPRA Paper 100257, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2019.

    More about this item

    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:wly:jpamgt:v:27:y:2008:i:1:p:7-19. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/34787/home .

    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.