Quality of Institutions, Technological Progress, and Pollution Havens in Latin America. An Analysis of the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis

José M. Cansino, Rocio Román-Collado and Juan C. Molina
Additional contact information
José M. Cansino: Departamento de Análisis Económico y Economía Política, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla 410818, Spain
Rocio Román-Collado: Departamento de Análisis Económico y Economía Política, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla 410818, Spain
Juan C. Molina: Departamento de Análisis Económico y Economía Política, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla 410818, Spain

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 13, 1-20

Abstract: A set of 17-year panel data (1996–2013) across a representative sample from eighteen Latin American countries is used to respond four research questions: Did Latin American Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions prove the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis? Did the quality of institutions play a compensating role for income on environmental stress? Did technological progress help decouple income from environmental stress? Has the Pollution Haven Hypothesis (PHH) been proven? In order to answer the research questions, the paper expands the traditional EKC approach by including an exclusive quality analysis of institutions, technological progress, and PHH as part of the model. This innovation is developed considering the most recent literature about EKC as a starting point. Major findings show that the relationship between income and GHG emissions is adjusted to the traditional EKC hypothesis for the analyzed period. They also show that the quality of institutions and technological progress improve environmental sustainability. However, the variables, Foreign Direct Investment and International Trade, provide a negative answer to the fourth question. The main methodological contribution of this paper is to use a threefold extended classic EKC model to conduct the feasible generalized least squares method. The paper also contributes to the growing body of PHH literature.

Keywords: environmental Kuznets curves; quality of institutions; CO 2 emissions; technological progress; pollution haven hypothesis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/13/3708/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/13/3708/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:13:p:3708-:d:246191

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().