17th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, "New Challenges in Food Policy, Trade and Economic Vulnerability"
Sprache des Tagungstitel:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
The view that human released CO2 emissions are one of the main causes of anthropogenic global warming is now widespread among the scientific community. Ranging from rising sea levels to land and water shortages the effects of
climate change on the global ecosystem and the world economy will be severe. This makes the existence of a U-shaped relationship between economic development and pollution the Holy Grail of environmental economics. While there is theoretical support for this so called
Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), epirical evidence is far from robust, sometimes even contradicting theoretical suggestions. Here we test for the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and real income for a panel of 78 individuals
(66 countries and 12 composite regions) for the years 1997, 2001, 2004 and 2007. We contribute to the literature in two ways. First, by applying multi-region input output (MRIO) methodology on the GTAP database we can also take CO2 consumption into account besides established
production-based measures. Secondly, we also apply a threshold model alongside conventional lniear models on our dataset. Applying the linear models we can adress methodological issues of the existing literature. Our results show a linear relationship between real income and
the production and consumption of CO2 emissions. We have some support for the hypothesis that consumption of CO2 is indeed increasing with income, which we want to testify with an threshold approach. The existence or non-existence of an EKC for CO2 is of considerable importance
of the design of global mitigation mechanisms and agreements on climate change. ...