Freedom of the press, inequality and environmental policy

Abstract

This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of environmental standards by studying the role of income inequality and freedom of press. Given that evidence of the environmental Kuznets curve has only been found for some countries, it is thus crucial to investigate whether ot factors besides income per capita levels may be affecting countries' decisions to pass environmentally-friendly legislation. We investigate the effe that inequality and freedom of the press have on environmental stringency for a sample of OECD and BRIICS countries and a global sample of 82 countries using data over the period 1994-2015. We hypothesize that the more unequal a society is, and the greater the oppression of the press is, less stringent environmental policies are. The results partially confirm our hypothesis. In particular, lack of press freedom is negatively correlated environmental stringency, whereas inequality shows a non-linear effect only for non-high-income countries.