Environmental Kuznets Curve for CO2 in Canada

Jie He and Patrick Richard

Cahiers de recherche from Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke

Abstract: The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is a theory by which the relationship between per capita GDP and per capita pollutant emissions has an inverted U shape. This implies that, past a certain point, economic growth may actually be profitable for environmental quality. Most studies on this subject are based on estimating fully parametric quadratic or cubic regression models. While this is not technically wrong, such an approach somewhat lacks flexibility since it may fail to detect the true shape of the relationship if it happens not to be of the specified form. We use semiparametric and flexible nonlinear parametric modelling methods in an attempt to provide more robust inferences. We find little evidence in favour of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Our main results could be interpreted as indicating that the oil shock of the 1970s has had an important impact on progress towards less polluting technology and production.

Keywords: Environmental Kuznets curve; CO2 emissions; Partially linear regression model; Flexible parametric inference; Oil shock. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q53 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2009-06-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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http://gredi.recherche.usherbrooke.ca/wpapers/GREDI-0913.pdf First version, 2009 (application/pdf)

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Journal Article: Environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 in Canada (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:shr:wpaper:09-13

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