Working Paper: NBER ID: w7711
Authors: William Harbaugh; Arik Levinson; David Wilson
Abstract: This paper uses an updated and revised panel data set on ambient air pollution in cities world-wide to examine the robustness of the evidence for the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between national income and pollution. We test the sensitivity of the pollution-income relationship to functional forms, to additional covariates, and to changes in the nations, cities, and years sampled. We find that the results are highly sensitive to these changes. We conclude that there is little empirical support for an inverted-U-shaped relationship between several important air pollutants and national income in these data.
Keywords: Environmental Kuznets Curve; Pollution; Economic Growth
JEL Codes: Q25; O13
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| national income (P44) | pollution (Q53) |
| pollution (Q53) | national income (P44) |
| data revisions (Y10) | turning points in pollution-income curve (O44) |
| econometric specifications (C51) | predicted relationships (C29) |
| GDP (E20) | SO2 levels (Q31) |
| pollution-income relationship (F64) | environmental policy (Q58) |