How ar pollution is related to GDP per capita of the OECD countries

Abstract

The main purpose of this project is to study whether air pollution is related to per capita GDP. The Environmental Kuznets Curve has been one of the most debated hypotheses in Environmental Economics in recent decades. According to this curve, the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation follows an inverted U-shaped curve. This implies that environmental degradation is a function of economic growth, increasing until a certain income level is reached, after which further economic growth is associated with progressively lower levels of environmental degradation. This thesis briefly reviews some of the research conducted on the topic, and later performs an econometric analysis of panel data for OECD member countries.