Question

The Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) argues that the pollution intensity of a country will increase in its earlier stage of development, but will decline afterwards.
(a)    Justify the dynamics of pollution as described by the EKC. (2 points)
(b)    Assume that the European continent is a single, unified country. Do you expect the turning point on the EKC to be earlier or later? Explain.

Answer 1

The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) idea expresses that there is a transformed "U" formed connection between environmental corruption and the pay level. This is due to the way that the EKC idea suggests that contamination diminishes once a basic level of pay is reached.

And it also argues that the lollution intensity of a country will increase in its earlier stage of development but it will decline afterwards.

a) Based on mechanism of regional pollution factors, such as economic growth, industrial structure, technological progress and this paper constructs an environment income simplified model with cubic term to analysis the hypothesis of Environmental Kuznets Curve, using interprovincial of 30 provinces during 1998 to 2007 between five regional pollution indexes including water pollution, atmospheric pollution, solid waste pollution and, in order to find out the main responsible affecting factors that worse the regional pollution. The results show that economic growth and trade liberalization have both positive and negative impact on pollution so that the effect of population size and government's environmental pollution control shows no significant effects on the five population. Technical development can be improved by environmental quality and industrial structure and decreased energy efficiency would intensify the pollution discharge.

b) The environmental Kuznets curve says that economic development initially leads to a decrease in the environment, but after a certain level of economic growth, a society starts to improve its connection with the environment and levels of environmental degradation. If we assume that European continent is a single, unified country we expect that the turning point on the EKC to be earlier because it shows the connection between economic quality and economic development. If there is any inequality in these relationship the EKC curve slightly changes so that we can assure about that.