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Economic, demographic and political determinants of pollution reassessed

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Recent literature proposes many variables as significant determinants of pollution. This paper gives an overview of this literature and asks which of these factors have an empirically robust impact on water and air pollution, i.e. do not depend upon the conditioning information set. For this, we apply Extreme Bound Analysis (EBA) on a panel of 208 countries covering the period 1960-2001. We find supportive evidence on the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve. Furthermore, mainly demographic variables and variables capturing the economic structure of a country contribute in explaining air and water pollution.

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  • Martin Gassebner & Michael Lamla & Jan-Egbert Sturm, 2006. "Economic, demographic and political determinants of pollution reassessed," KOF Working papers 06-129, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:kof:wpskof:06-129
    DOI: 10.3929/ethz-a-005139289
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    Cited by:

    1. C. Hopp & A. Dreher, 2013. "Do differences in institutional and legal environments explain cross-country variations in IPO underpricing?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(4), pages 435-454, February.
    2. Nguyen-Van, Phu, 2010. "Energy consumption and income: A semiparametric panel data analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 557-563, May.
    3. repec:eid:wpaper:02/10 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Bruce Morley, 2012. "Empirical evidence on the effectiveness of environmental taxes," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(18), pages 1817-1820, December.
    5. Lee, Chien-Chiang & Chiu, Yi-Bin & Sun, Chia-Hung, 2010. "The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for water pollution: Do regions matter?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 12-23, January.
    6. Lamla, Michael J., 2009. "Long-run determinants of pollution: A robustness analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 135-144, November.
    7. Adewuyi, Adeolu O., 2016. "Effects of public and private expenditures on environmental pollution: A dynamic heterogeneous panel data analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 489-506.

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    Pollution; Environment; Sensitivity analysis; Environmental Kuznets curve;
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