Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:39:00.364Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A note on ‘the simple analytics of the Environmental Kuznets Curve’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2006

FLORENZ PLASSMANN  and
NEHA KHANNA
FLORENZ PLASSMANN
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, State University of New York at Binghamton, PO Box 6000, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000. Tel: 607-777-4304. Fax: 607-777-2681. Email: [email protected]
NEHA KHANNA
Affiliation:
Department of Economics & Environmental Studies Program, State University of New York at Binghamton, PO Box 6000, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000. Tel: 607-777-2689. Fax: 607-777-2681. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In a widely cited paper, Andreoni and Levinson (2001) argue that, under very mild restrictions on preferences, increasing returns to scale in pollution abatement are a sufficient condition for pollution to ultimately fall to zero with income growth. We show that the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve depends on the relative magnitudes of the returns to scale in abatement and in gross pollution, rather than on their absolute values. Increasing returns to scale in abatement by themselves are not sufficient for pollution to fall with income unless the returns to scale of abatement exceed the returns to the production of gross pollution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 11 , Issue 6 , December 2006 , pp. 697 - 707
Copyright
2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We thank the journal editor and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft. All errors are ours.