بهره وری کل عوامل و منحنی کوزنتس زیست محیطی

Empirical studies support the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis (EKC) for some pollutants—as income increases pollution increases, reaches a peak and eventually decreases. While relying mostly on cross-sectional data, the interpretations assert that the EKC is a by-product of economic growth over time. In doing so, and in neglecting the role of important country-specific characteristics, these studies overlook potential econometric problems and introduce policy misconceptions. Differences in total factor productivity (TFPs) account for much of the variation in income across countries, with important implications for environmental quality. We develop a theoretical model where different TFPs produce a cross-sectional EKC, even if the dynamic path of environmental quality to its steady-state in individual countries suggest otherwise. The cross-sectional EKC depends on diminishing returns to scale in environmental protection, on the curvatures of the utility function with respect to consumption and of the environmental protection function, and the elasticities of steady-state consumption and environmental expenditures with respect to variation in TFPs.

This paper investigates how differences in total factor productivity (TFP) affect environmental quality in different countries. We develop a theoretical model where different TFPs produce a U-shaped relationship between environmental quality and income in a cross-section of countries, even if the path of environmental quality to its steady-state value is monotonic in individual countries. This relationship is implied by the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), an inverted U-shaped relationship between pollution and income.1 We conduct the analysis by performing comparative statics in the Pareto optimal steady-state of a dynamic economy where different TFPs are considered.

This paper is motivated by the contrast between the rhetoric and the empirical evidence behind the environmental Kuznets curve conjecture. The rhetoric emphasizes economic development and environmental trends over time while the evidence is largely cross-sectional. We establish the link between total factor productivity and the environmental Kuznets curve in an economy where individuals value consumption and the public good environmental quality, pollution results from capital and degrades the stock of the environment, and a technology for environmental protection exists. We perform comparative statics in the steady state of this dynamic economy and derive the conditions for an EKC resulting from heterogeneous TFPs. A U-shaped response of environmental quality to variation in total factor productivity depends on the curvature of the utility function with respect to consumption relative to the curvature of the environmental protection function, and on the elasticities of consumption and environmental protection with respect to TFPs.