Municipal Solid Waste and Development:The Environmental Kuznets Curve Evidence for Mediterranean Countries

Houévoh Gnonlonfin (), Yusuf Kocoglu () and Nicolas Peridy ()
Additional contact information
Yusuf Kocoglu: LEAD, Université de Toulon

Region et Developpement, 2017, vol. 45, 113-130

Abstract: The application of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) to Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in Mediterranean countries is particularly challenging given the sensitivity of these economies to a lot of environmental constraints due to socio-economic factors such as population growth, urbanization, tourism and economic development. We aim to fill the lack of literature for these countries by testing the EKC for 19 Mediterranean countries over the period 1990-2010 and to identify the main determinants of MSW through a panel data model. Several original control variables are included, such as socio-economic factors, working women, education, technology and climate. Another original aspect of our research is the management of the missing data through the imputation method developed by Honaker and King (2010). Results show that the EKC hypothesis only holds for developed countries with very high turning points. The main policy implication for Mediterranean countries is that in the short or medium run, policy makers cannot use growth and development policies as a means of reducing MSW. This problem is even more acute because the model shows that some economic and socio-demographic factors will go on to have a detrimental impact on pollution by increasing MSW. These factors are the rise in the working women ratio, the rise in urbanization, the increase in the share of industry in Mediterranean economies (displacement effect) and the role of international trade (detrimental technological and scale effect). Consequently, policy makers should urgently implement ambitious public policies that are dedicated to the reduction of MSW in these countries.

Keywords: Municipal solid waste; Mediterranean countries; Environmental Kuznets Curve; Imputation method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q53 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://regionetdeveloppement.univ-tln.fr/wp-conte ... n_Kocoglu_Peridy.pdf (application/pdf)

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:tou:journl:v:45:y:2017:p:113-130

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Region et Developpement from Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christophe Van Huffel ().