The relationship between economic growth and environment in the Mena region : an environmental Kuznets curve

Abstract EN

This paper studies the relationship between economic growth and environmental performance through the assessment of Kuznets curve which has two shapes.

The first takes an inverted U- shape, meaning that pollution increases with GDP growth up to a certain limit after which, it declines.

The second takes N-shape, implying that pollution increases with the GDP growth to a maximum point, then it declines, till a minimum beyond which pollution starts to increase again with GDP growth.

The relationship between per capita GDP and a set of air pollutants variables are explored.

These variables are: per capita CO2 emissions, Nitrous oxide emissions and the other greenhouse gases (HFC, PFC and SF6) emissions.

The models used are, for Egypt, ARDL Model during the studied period (1965-2013), and for the MENA region, fixed effects model is tested based on a Hausman test during the covered period (1980-2011).

The results support the applicability of the environmental Kuznets curvein its inverted –U shape for Egypt and for MENA region in both forms between the same variables.