Regional Environmental Kuznets Curves and Their Turning Points for Air Pollutants in Korea

Abstract

By using the air pollutant emissions data of 15 metropolitan cities and provinces in Korea for the period of 2000-2012, this study takes the empirical test of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) on the relationship between the air pollutants – SOx, NOx, CO, TSP – and the income per capita level. In addition to the traditional EKC model specification, this study tests the extended EKC model with additional control variables such as value added by manufacturing industry, population density etc. Furthermore, Hausman and Taylor model and Dynamic Panel System Generalized Methods of Moments (system GMM) are used to examine the robustness of the model specifications. It is found that the basic EKC exists only for NOx while the extended EKC holds for all three pollutants except for SOx. In particular, this study shows that the turning point of the EKC is 8-15 thousand US dollars of income per capita, which is in contrast to much lower values in existing studies that used the Korean data.