The possibility of environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 emission

Abstract

Considerable interest has focused on the possible existence of an environmental Kuznets curve. The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis admits the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth, generally approximated by GDP per capita, and environmental degradation. Despite the abundance of empirical literature on the environmental Kuznets curve, so far little study has been dealt with the relationship among developing Asian countries. Hence, we have therefore tried to extract this curve for these countries by focusing on the CO₂ emission as an indicator of environmental degradation. For this aim, we have applied the econometric techniques of panel data over the period ranging from 1990 to 2011. By estimating a quadratic relationship between per capita income and pollution and by employing GLS method, we are able to deduce a U-shaped relation between income and CO₂ emission.

Keywords: Environmental Kuznets curve, growth, CO₂ emission