Environmental Kuznets Curve and ecological footprint: A time series analysis

In this paper we examine the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis using the Ecological Footprint (EF), a more comprehensive indicator of environmental degradation, through a time-series analysis for seven Latin American countries covering the 1961-2007 period. We first test the EKC hypothesis from traditional linear and quadratic functions, with standard and logarithmic specifications. The EKC hypothesis is not supported for Latin American countries, suggesting that there is no improvement of environmental degradation when income increases. We find that most of the countries exhibit a positive linear relationship between the EF and GDP. Finally, we study the long-term relationship between the EF and GDP. The results show evidence of long-term relationship between income and EF for Brazil and Uruguay with quadratic and linear relationship, respectively, which improves the quality of the regressions.