Talk:Kuznets curve

Graphics
This thing desperately needs a picture of the curve. I'm going to try to find one. 203.199.50.16 07:17, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Done.
 * Jkerwin 07:39, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Need a better picture of the curve, it's not good at all, it shouldn't be symmetrical Lukeitfc 18:12, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Pronounciation
Okay this is a pretty trivial matter but I'm writing an essay on KC's for a scholarship I found on the internet, and I would like to know how to pronounce KUZNET. Is it kooze-net? Or CUZ(as in because)-NET? I would like to know so I don't sound like an idiot when I talk about our KC's.

I pronounce it like Cuz-nets but faster, so like KznetsLukeitfc 18:12, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

On cross sectional
Actually, I believe the Kuznet also appears for data of England and Wales. Weil's book on page 370 has it. Brusegadi 00:29, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Question
I have a question: what is the cause and what is the consequence in the Picture (U curve). Try to redraw the curve but now with exchanging the axis making the x axis to y (just rotate the Picture clockwise and flip it) and try the same argumentation as in the article (early stages of devlopements etc....)==> it dont work since the curve is not a function anymore. So arguing that per capita income increases and then decreases (or growth or what else) is non sens since for every inequality value on the x coordinate there exsist 2 corresponding points on the income axis so which one to choose????


 * It does not matter that the curve is no longer a function as you say (if I understand correctly.) What this says is two things:

Thus, for given the income of a country X, you can use this relationship to estimate X's level of inequality. I recommend you get a user page so that answers to these type of questions can be posted on your user page. Also, sign your posts. I do thank you for your comment because it might be indicative of deficiencies in the article. Brusegadi 00:05, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * As a country develops it will first become more unequal. Eventually, it will reach a maximum inequality, and then it will become more equal.  The classic example is England.  It reaches its highest point of inequality probably at around the industrial revolution (not sure thought.)  This means that developing countries today may experience such trends.
 * The other meaning is that if you plot countries income versus their inequality; inequality rises with income until you reach a maximum inequality. Then, after that "critical' income, inequality decreases as you raise the income.

Kuznet's Ratio
The definition was both self-contradictory and completely incorrect; it has been changed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.140.40.164 (talk) 23:44, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed, It was nonsense.  I will source it when I get home. Brusegadi (talk) 00:15, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

-- the rule is portrayed as universal, there needs to be more discussion of the circumstances in which it applies, and mention of the lack of references if few good ones seem available. It appears to me to apply to the opposite domain as Piketty's prediction of inequity, for example, a rule for the "sweet period" of growth rather than the sour one, when it appears many of the old rules do indeed change.Jlhenshaw (talk) 16:41, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Environmental Kuznets curves lacks critical discussion, depth and references
Kuznets curves are empirical period with many different possible explanations. That is especially true for EKCs. This whole article is misrepresentative and misleading !!


 * I have been adding some references. I love this topic! Grundle2600 (talk) 21:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

And since it's way longer than the rest of the article, it's undue. It should be split off into a separate article.radek (talk) 02:35, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, it most certainly should. The article on the Kuznets curve should be concerned primarily with the Kuznets curve, not with analogous theories.  Really... Bastin 21:45, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, Environmental Kuznets Curves (EKC) is what they're called in the economic & environmental literature. And the NY Times calls them straight "Kuznets curves." Still, a spinoff's not a bad idea. I'm planning to work on improving the EKC section, which is my main interest here. Best, Pete Tillman (talk) 20:24, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

General cleanup
I started a general cleanup and revision of the article, particularly addressing the lack of citations, lack of clarity, NPOV concerns and WP:weasel words. The recent John Tierney columns at NY Times were particularly interesting and helpful -- added as ext. links. Lots more to do, but see what you think. Thanks, Pete Tillman (talk) 14:45, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Japan logging citation was SELFPUB
When I looked it up the following citation, it turned out to be a self published blog post, which is not up to WP's standards (WP:SELFPUBLISH). The following is the removed cite:
 * citation|title=Transfer of Deforestation: How Japan Saved its Forests by Importing Wood from other Countries|author=Szczepanski, K.|date=9 February 2008|publisher=Helium Conservation

The article actually is online and may be found at www.helium.com/items/850812-transfer-of-deforestation-how-japan-saved-its-forests-by-importing-wood-from. Possibly the original author omitted the url in the cite because helium.com is on WP blacklist of Spam sites.

The article provided a reference to another source, but it appears that the material on this uruguay site is also self published. There is a good list of references at the end of this article, so if anyone can verify one of these sources as providing proper support for the statement, that would be a wonderful service.

In place of the removed citation, i added a citation needed. J JMesserly (talk) 21:25, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Split off Environmental Kuznets curve?
As discussed above, I believe it would make sense to split off a separate article on Environmental Kuznets curves. This is a major topic of research and debate within the environmental social sciences. Good idea? Please discuss here... Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 13:42, 12 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't see why not. Just leave a link + summary here. Guettarda (talk) 12:08, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Some examples
It would be useful to have examples of where countries are on these curves at the moment. In the UK inequalities are increasing which would indicate it is to the left of the maximum, but how long is it before the UK reaches the maximum and inequalities start to decrease? Similarly for other countries. Where are different countries on the curve? 87.113.10.162 (talk) 01:39, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * It's impossible to say: the 'Kuznets curve' is an unproved (and perhaps unprovable) hypothesis, it's a long way from hard science. The mere existence of the curve is disputed: other economists like have suggested that the reality may in fact be the inverse of what Kuznets suggested, with inequality being at its lowest in medium-development societies. Robofish (talk) 17:39, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

There are still some differences.
Well, I must admit that the EKC is a great policy, but there are still some differences between the theory and the reality. In some parts of the world, it's not the same as EKC has described. Now I have some questions. Are those areas on the left of the curve or they just don't obey the EKC? If they turely obey the theory and are on the left of the curves, when will they reach the maximum and inequalities start to decrease? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.108.147.216 (talk) 10:35, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Dr. Burnett's comment on this article
Dr. Burnett has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

""This could be a reason why environmental Kuznets curves have been found to be applicable to only certain types of pollutants.[4] Yandle et al. argue that the EKC has not been found to apply to carbon because most pollutants create localized problems like lead and sulfur, so there is a greater urgency and response to cleaning up such pollutants. As a country develops, the marginal value of cleaning up such pollutants makes a large direct improvement to the quality of citizens' lives. Conversely, reducing carbon dioxide emissions does not have a dramatic impact at a local level, so the impetus to clean them up is only for the altruistic reason of improving the global environment. This becomes a tragedy of the commons where it is most efficient for everyone to pollute and for no one to clean up, and everyone is worse as a result (Hardin, 1968). Thus, even in a country like the US with a high level of income, carbon emissions are not decreasing in accordance with the EKC.[4]"

Burnett et al. (2013) found limited evidence for the hypothesized inverted U-shaped hypothesis between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and income in the U.S. for the period 1981 to 2003. However, the authors argued that given the nature of how CO2 is measured, which is estimated based on a region's (fossil fuel) energy consumption, their findings may instead suggest that economic growth in the U.S. is driving down emission intensities, not the actual level of CO2 emissions themselves.

Burnett, J.W., J.C. Bergstrom, and M.E. Wetzstein. 2013. Carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth in the U.S. Journal of Policy Modeling, 35: 1014-1028. -

"The environmental Kuznets curve is a hypothesized relationship between environmental quality and economic development: various indicators of environmental degradation tend to get worse as modern economic growth occurs until average income reaches a certain point over the course of development.[14] Although the subject of continuing debate, some evidence supports the claim that environmental health indicators, such as water and air pollution, show the inverted U-shaped curve.[1] It has been argued that this trend occurs in the level of many of the environmental pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, lead, DDT, chlorofluorocarbons, sewage, and other chemicals previously released directly into the air or water."

It would help here to reference the two seminal papers in the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) literature. The two seminal papers are:

Grossman, G., and A. Krueger. 1991. Environmental impacts of north American free trade agreement. National Bureau of Economic Analysis. Technical report

Grossman, G., and A. Krueger. 1995. Economic growth and the environment? Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110(2): 353–377. -

"Suri and Chapman argue that a net pollution reduction may not actually be occurring on global scales. Wealthy nations have a trend of exporting the activities that create the most pollution, like manufacturing of clothing and furniture, to poorer nations that are still in the process of industrial development (Suri and Chapman, 1998). This could mean that as the world's poor nations develop, they will have nowhere to export their pollution. Thus, this progression of environmental clean up occurring in conjunction with economic growth cannot be replicated indefinitely because there may be nowhere to export waste and pollution intensive processes. However, Gene Grossman and Alan B. Krueger, the authors who initially made the correlation between economic growth, environmental clean-up, and the Kuznets curve, conclude that there is "no evidence that environmental quality deteriorates steadily with economic growth."[21] And Yandle et al. conclude that "policies that stimulate growth (trade liberalization, economic restructuring, and price reform) should be good for the environment".[4]"

The argument that wealthier nations are exporting pollution-intensive economic activities to poorer nations is called the "pollution haven hypothesis" (Cole, 2004). However, past research results have yielded mixed results as to whether pollution havens exist.

M.A. Cole. 2004. Trade, the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental Kuznets curve: examining the linkages. Ecological Economics, 48(1): 71-81."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Burnett has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Burnett, J. Wesley, 2009. "Economic Growth and Environmental Degradation," 2009 Annual Meeting, January 31-February 3, 2009, Atlanta, Georgia 46838, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 19:41, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Liddle's comment on this article
Dr. Liddle has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Environmental Kuznets Curve

Second to last paragraph: I think the argument by Suri and Chapman was highly speculative—even though it could have been empirical analyzed. For example, I am not sure whether “manufacturing of clothing and furniture” are very polluting. (Indeed, I believe the Suri and Chapman paper analyzed energy and not the types of pollutants that might result from processes like clothing manufacture.) The most polluting/energy intensive manufacturing sectors are things like metal smelting, iron and steel, and chemicals (sectors that define whether or not a country is industrialized, and thus, sectors unlikely to be found in the poorest countries). Furthermore, a new dataset by Le Quéré et al.—which estimates carbon emissions on a territory and a consumption basis—finds that countries with low GDP per capita have higher consumption-based emissions than territory-based emissions. In other words, poor countries are carbon importers (as are most rich countries).

Last paragraph: The Stern comment regarding poor econometrics. This comment may have been accurate/warranted in the late 1990s; however, there has been a substantial literature since that has aimed to improve both the methods and modeling of possible nonlinear income-emissions relationships (see the literature review in Liddle Messinis 2015). So I would at least date the poor econometrics criticism.

Liddle, B. & Messinis, G. Revisiting sulfur Kuznets curves with endogenous breaks modeling: Substantial evidence of inverted-Us/Vs for individual OECD countries. Economic Modelling, Vol. 49, 2015.

Le Quéré, C, R Moriarty, RM Andrew, JG Canadell, S Sitch, JI Korsbakken, P Friedlingstein, GP Peters, RJ Andres, TA Boden, RA Houghton, JI House, RF Keeling, P Tans, A Arneth, DCE Bakker, L Barbero, L Bopp, J Chang, F Chevallier, LP Chini, P Ciais, M Fader, RA Feely, T Gkritzalis, I Harris, J Hauck, T Ilyina, AK Jain, E Kato, V Kitidis, K Klein Goldewijk, C Koven, P Landschützer, SK Lauvset, N Lefèvre, A Lenton, ID Lima, N Metzl, F Millero, DR Munro, A Murata, JEMS Nabel, S Nakaoka, Y Nojiri, K O'Brien, A Olsen, T Ono, FF Pérez, B Pfeil, D Pierrot, B Poulter, G Rehder, C Rödenbeck, S Saito, U Schuster, J Schwinger, R Séférian, T Steinhoff, BD Stocker, AJ Sutton, T Takahashi, B Tilbrook, IT van der Laan-Luijkx, GR van der Werf, S van Heuven, D Vandemark, N Viovy, A Wiltshire, S Zaehle, and N Zeng 2015 Global Carbon Budget 2015 Earth System Science Data, 7, 349-396 doi:10.5194/essd-7-349-2015"

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Liddle has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Liddle, Brantley, 2015. "What Are the Carbon Emissions Elasticities for Income and Population? Bridging STIRPAT and EKC via robust heterogeneous panel estimates," MPRA Paper 61304, University Library of Munich, Germany.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 20:36, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Ozturk's comment on this article
Dr. Ozturk has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Additional recent related references:

Md. Mahmudul Alam, Md. Wahid Murad, Abu Hanifa Md. Noman, İlhan Ozturk (2016), Relationships Among Carbon Emissions, Economic Growth, Energy Consumption And Population Growth: Testing Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis For Brazil, China, India And Indonesia. Ecological Indicators, 70, 466-479.

Usama Al-Mulali, Ilhan Ozturk, Sakiru Adebola Solarin (2016) Investigating the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis in Seven Regions: The Role of Renewable Energy. Ecological Indicators, 67, 267-282.

Mehdi Ben Jebli, Slim Ben Youssef, İlhan Ozturk (2016), Testing Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: The Role of Renewable and Non-Renewable Energy Consumption and Trade in OECD Countries. Ecological Indicators, 60, 824-831.

Mehdi Ben Jebli, Slim Ben Youssef, İlhan Ozturk (2015), “The Role of Renewable Energy Consumption and Trade: Environmental Kuznets Curve Analysis for Sub-Saharan Africa Countries”, African Development Review, 27(3), 288-300.

Usama Al-Mulali, Chor Foon Tang, Ilhan Ozturk, (2015) Estimating The Environment Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: Evidence From Latin America and The Caribbean Countries. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Review, 50, 918-924.

Ilhan Ozturk, Usama Al-Mulali, (2015) Investigating the Validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis in Cambodia. Ecological Indicators, 57, 324-330.

Muhammad Shahbaz, Smile Dube, Ilhan Ozturk, Abdul Jalil (2015) Testing the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis in Portugal. International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, 5(2), 475-481.

Usama Al-Mulali, Behnaz Saboori, Ilhan Ozturk, (2015). Investigating the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis in Vietnam. Energy Policy, 76, 123-131.

Nicholas Apergis, Ilhan Ozturk, (2015) Testing environmental Kuznets Hypothesis in Asian Countries. Ecological Indicators, 52(May), 16-22.

Muhammad Shahbaz, Naceur Khraief, Gazi Salah Uddin, Ilhan Ozturk, (2014) Environmental Kuznets Curve in an Open Economy: A Bounds Testing and Causality Analysis for Tunisia. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 34, 325-336."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Ozturk has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference 1: Ben Jebli, Mehdi & Ben Youssef, Slim & Ozturk, Ilhan, 2014. "The Role of Renewable Energy Consumption and Trade: Environmental Kuznets Curve Analysis for Sub-Saharan Africa Countries," MPRA Paper 54300, University Library of Munich, Germany.


 * Reference 2: Shahbaz, Muhammad & Ozturk, Ilhan & Afza, Talat & Ali, Amjad, 2013. "Revisiting the Environmental Kuznets Curve in a Global Economy," MPRA Paper 46610, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Apr 2013.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 16:59, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Dr. He's comment on this article
Dr. He has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"He (2007) further indicated the potential divergence between the micro-foundation of the EKC's theoretical assumptions and the reality for most developing economies. She noted that the theoretical explanations implying an automatic decoupling between economic growth and environmental deterioration are based partially or totally on the following three assumptions: that pollution-related marginal disutility increases with income; that the availability of the abatement technology increases with economic development; and finally, that the existence of an efficient institutional system guarantees that the economy follows neoclassical reasoning. Unfortunately, these three assumptions are not uniformly valid for all countries, especially for most developing countries, where the efficiency of the disclosure of pollution information, governmental incentives and capacity, the distribution of decisionmaking power in society, etc., can all compromise the concretization of the three theoretical micro-foundations. There are a series of theoretical and empirical studies that discuss the impact of governmental/institutional efficiency on the determination of environmental regulation, such as Torras and Boyce (1998), Bimonte (2002), Lopez and Mitra (2000), Barrett and Graddy (2000), Damania et al. (2003). Most of these studies offered conclusions about a potential delay in the appearance of the turning point in the income–pollution nexus in countries with a high level of corruption/inequality, low institutional efficiency or both.

In a more recent paper of Yang, He and Chen (2015), the authors revisited the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis by following the logic of a “General Sensitivity Test,” more often known under the name of “Extreme Bound Analysis (EBA),” which was initially proposed by Leamer (1978). Based the data of China, a developing country, they bootstrapped and re-ran most of the parametric EKC models that have been studied in past literatures and replicated most of the parametric estimation methods that have been used. Based on the results of over 140 millions régressions, they concluded that the probability of obtaining an Environmental Kuznets Curve, once the coincidence of the data, the influence of the other potential explanatory variables and the impacts of different econometrical strategies are considered, remains statistically low. In most cases, obtaining the Environmental Kuznets curve remains a statistically fragile outcome.

He, J., 2007. Is the environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis valid for developing countries? A survey. Cahier de recherche, GREDI, 07-03. University of Sherbrooke. Torras,M., Boyce, J.K., 1998. Income, inequality and pollution: a reassessment of the environmental Kuznets curve. Ecol. Econ. 25, 147–160. Bimonte, S., 2002. Information access, income distribution and the environmental Kuznets curve. Ecol. Econ. 4, 145–156. Lopez, R., Mitra, S., 2000. Corruption, pollution, and the Kuznets Environment Curve. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 40, 137–150. Barrett, S., Graddy, K., 2000. Freedom, growth and the environment. Environ. Dev. Econ. 5, 433–456 Damania, R., Fredriksson, P.G., List, J.A., 2003. Trade liberalization, corruption, and environmental policy formation: theory and evidence. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 46, 490–512. Yang, H., J. He. and S. Chen (2015). The Fragility of the Environmental Kuznets Curve: Revisiting the hypothesis with Chinese data via an "Extreme Bound Analysis". Ecological Economics, 109(2015) : 41-58. Leamer, E.E., 1978. Specification Searches: Ad Hoc Inference with Nonexperimental Data. Wiley & Sons, New York."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. He has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference 1: Jie He, 2011. "Economic Determinants for China's Industrial SO2 Emission: Reduced vs. Structural form and the role of international trade," Working Papers halshs-00564688, HAL.


 * Reference 2: Jie He & Patrick Richard, 2009. "Environmental Kuznets Curve for CO2 in Canada," Cahiers de recherche 09-13, Departement d'Economique de la Faculte d'administration a l'Universite de Sherbrooke.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 20:59, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

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EKC
There are plenty of problems with the EKC hypothesis, but the article as it stands fails WP:NPOV. As one example, the current version implies that greenhouse gas emissions are a counterexample, but on standard measures, emissions have fallen for most OECD countries since 2005, consistent with EKC. There are counterpoints about emissions embodied in imports, so it's hard to reach a definitive conclusion. Still, this section needs a fairly thorough rewrite to be an encyclopedic treatment JQ (talk) 06:49, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

That is spurious corellelation, not evidence: causality is not correlation; globally, as GDP growth has risen, so have greenhouse gas emissions with no sign of abatement and extremely destructive consequences if it is allowed to continue. Yours is an absurd and unscientific claim reelecting your personal opinion. I have sited copious sources concluding that there is insuficient evidence for the existence of an EKC that you have simply ignored, the evidence for its existence is far weaker, and the definition of its success is variable. Mexico has experienced increased deforestation since its supposed turning point. Site well designed, econometric studies, not your casual observations. Countries will no longer be able to reach OCED status given the rate of carbon emissions and the increasing harm that are occurring, take a look at the horrors of the anthropogenic-climate change caused drought and its horror mothers dying of starvation and children dying and talk about the effectiveness of the EKC! Copious studies refute a CO2 emissions EKC and millions are dying across the globe even for the far easier-to-remove local pollutants that any meaningful evidence for an EKC have been shown for. I hope you are ready to answer for the Millions of fish and shellfish dying form the heat in the Northwest United States right now, those drowning in Germany, and China, because this where the fruits of the pseudoscientific EKC has landed us this Summer.

Recent reverts
Please form a consensus for the recent deletions here. Note in particular that reverting back to a version that has had all of the references removed is not doing this article any favors. - MrOllie (talk) 15:18, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Again, please stop pasting in an unsourced chunk of text containing your personal POV and original research of text over and over. This is not how Wikipedia is written. I have also reverted a bunch of misplaced comments from this talk page that were added into an old section over someone else's signature. If you are having trouble understanding how talk pages are used, see Help:Talk pages. MrOllie (talk) 01:30, 7 August 2021 (UTC)