Abstract
The objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between per capita emissions (\(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) and \(\hbox {SO}_{2}\)) and economic growth (per capita GDP) in the UK using a long span of data. This paper examines the existence of a non-linear relationship between emissions and economic growth using methods that do not restrict the relationship to be any particular shape. The methodology employs instrumental variables in the place of per capita GDP to deal with potential concerns about errors in variables and endogeneity. The empirical results provide strong support for the environmental Kuznets curve, with estimated turning points in 1966 and 1967 for \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) and \(\hbox {SO}_{2}\) , respectively. These turning points correspond roughly with the introduction of the Clean Air Act in the UK as well as the reduction in the use of coal as an energy source; and together, they provide a snapshot of the forces driving the turning points. The paper continues by further investigating the temporal behavior of the inverted U-shaped relationship. The findings indicate that if emissions and per capita GDP deviate from their long-run relationship, emissions do the “heavy lifting” to restore the system to equilibrium. This result is intuitively pleasing because mitigation is directly affected by legislation as opposed to declining economic growth.
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Notes
A simple search of this journal’s articles over the last decade provide dozens of references to article published on the environmental Kuznets curve.
See Wagner (2008) for a relatively recent review. The point at which the environmental Kuznets curve turns is given by the income level at which the derivative of \(\hbox {Y}_\mathrm{t}\) with respect to \(\hbox {X}_\mathrm{t}\) equals zero \((-{\upbeta }_{1}/2{\upbeta }_{2})\).
We thank Bruce Morley for providing the data used in their analysis. The following data description is from Fosten et al. (2012, p. 27). The \(\hbox {SO}_{2}\) data is similar to that used by Markandya et al. (2006), who reported evidence of an environmental Kuznets curve for 12 European nations, including the UK.
The first stage regressions run the logarithm of per capita GDP against a constant, a linear trend, and the four economic series. Figure 1 presents the associated levels of per capita GDP taking the exponents of the fitted values.
BBC (December 19, 1956).
See digest of Department of Energy and Climate Change (2009).
Seo (2008) employed 200 bootstrap replications whereas we use 1,000 to simulate the distribution of the test statistic. The CO2 p value is 3.15% while the SO2 p value is close to zero.
Gonzalo and Pitarakis (2006) argue that the traditional VECM representation, usually used within the Johansen and Juselius (1990) approach to cointegration modeling, cannot be derived from a non-linearly cointegrated system because the first-differences of the series need not be stationary. Here, the final model involves an OLS regression on the basis functions based on the transformed regressors, so the Engle–Granger VECM representation can be employed.
The band-TAR model was introduced by Balke and Fomby (1997).
We thank Daiki Maki for providing the GAUSS code required to run the test.
Specifically, we used 1,000 replications for sample sizes 153 and 174 under the null of non-cointegration and tabulated the 1, 5 and 10 % critical values.
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Sephton, P., Mann, J. Compelling Evidence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve in the United Kingdom. Environ Resource Econ 64, 301–315 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-014-9871-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-014-9871-z
Keywords
- Environmental Kuznets curve
- \(\hbox {CO}_{2} \hbox { and } \hbox {SO}_{2}\) emissions
- Nonlinear cointegration
- Threshold cointegration
- Asymmetric adjustment