Pollution, Economic Development and Democracy: Evidence from the MENA countries

Mohammad Reza Farzanegan () and Gunther Markwardt

No 201227, MAGKS Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung)

Abstract: The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries are among the world's top emitters of CO2 and SO2 in per capita terms. The objective of this paper is to analyze whether investing in the democratic development of these countries is an e ective tool to make the economic growth in this region more environmentally compatible. Arguing on the basis of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis and using panel data on the income-emissiondemocracy nexus, we nd evidence that improvements in the democratic development of the MENA countries help to mitigate environmental problems. Our results clearly show, that the quality of democratic institutions has a greater in uence on local environmental problems than on global environmental issues in the MENA region.

Keywords: democratic development; political institutions, environmental quality; MENA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O56 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara and nep-env
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mar:magkse:201227

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