The Environmental Kuznets Curve: Real Progress or Misspecified Models?

Daniel L. Millimet; John A. List; Thanasis Stengos

doi:10.1162/003465303772815916

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The Environmental Kuznets Curve: Real Progress or Misspecified Models?

Daniel L. Millimet¹; John A. List²; Thanasis Stengos³

¹ Southern Methodist University · ² University of Maryland, College Park · ³ University of Guelph

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2003

We explore the importance of modeling strategies when estimating the emissions-income relationship. Using U.S. state-level panel data on nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions, we estimate several environmental Kuznets curves using the standard parametric framework as well as a more flexible semiparametric alternative. Formal statistical comparisons of the results overwhelmingly reject the parametric approach. Moreover, the differences, particularly for sulfur dioxide, are economically significant.

DOI: 10.1162/003465303772815916
Volume: 85 (4)
Pages: 1038-1047
Language: en
Export: BibTeX
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