The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for water pollution: Do regions matter?

Chien-Chiang Lee (), Yi-Bin Chiu and Chia-Hung Sun ()

Energy Policy, 2010, vol. 38, issue 1, 12-23

Abstract: This study revisits the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for water pollution by using a recent dynamic technique, which is the generalized method of moments (GMM) approach, for a board sample of 97 countries during the period 1980-2001. On a global scale, as we cannot obtain the EKC relationship between real income and biological oxygen demand (BOD) emissions, this paper further classifies these countries into four regional groups - Africa, Asia and Oceania, America, and Europe - to explore whether the different regions have different ECK relationships. The empirical results show evidence of the inverted U-shaped EKC relationships' existence in America and Europe, but not in Africa and Asia and Oceania. Thus, the regional difference of EKC for water pollution is supported. Furthermore, the estimated turning points are, approximately, US$13,956 and US$38,221 for America and Europe, respectively.

Keywords: Environmental; Kuznets; curve; Biological; oxygen; demand; emissions; Generalized; method; of; moments; approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (52)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(09)00318-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:1:p:12-23

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().