Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2001
Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) analysis links changes in environmental quality to national economic growth. The reduced form models, however, do not provide insight into the underlying processes that generate these changes. We compare EKC models to structural transition models of per capita CO2 emissions and per capita GDP, and find that, for the 16 countries which have undergone such a transition, the initiation of the transition correlates not with income levels but with historic events related to the oil price shocks of the 1970s and the policies that followed them. In contrast to previous EKC studies of CO2 the transition away from positive emissions elasticities for these 16 countries is found to occur as a sudden, discontinuous transition rather than as a gradual change. We also demonstrate that the third order polynomial 'N' dependence of emissions on income is the result of data aggregation. We conclude that neither the 'U'- nor the 'N'-shaped relationship between CO2 emissions and income provide a reliable indication of future behaviour.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.