Willingness to Pay for Environmental Quality: Testable Empirical Implications of the Growth and Environment Literature

Debra Israel & Arik Levinson ()
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Debra Israel & Arik Levinson: Department of Economics, Georgetown University, http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/aml6/
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Arik Levinson

Working Papers from Georgetown University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Several different theoretical models of economic growth and environmental quality each generate inverse-U-shaped pollution-income paths, or "environmental Kuznets curves." They rely on different assumptions to generate the reversal of pollution trends, with correspondingly different policy implications. While the empirical implications for pollution are indistinguishable (by design), the models have distinct implications for the pattern of people's marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for environmental improvements as a function of income. In this paper we demonstrate those different implications theoretically, and test for them empirically using data from the World Value Survey (WVS). We find strong relationships between MWTP and individual characteristics, such as age, income, and education, but little evidence that MWTP varies systematically with economic growth.

Keywords: Earned World Values Survey; environmental Kuznets curve; environmental preferences. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 D62 Q2 R1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-02-09
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Journal Article: Willingness to Pay for Environmental Quality: Testable Empirical Implications of the Growth and Environment Literature (2004)
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