Hétérogénéité des agents et la relation pollution-revenu

Several econometric studies have shown that, at least for some pollutants, the relationship between emissions and income per capita follows an inverted U curve, known as ?environmental Kuznets cuve??. This paper present a simple microeconomic model in which income explain the shape of the emission path. Under some hypothesis, the trade-off between consumption and pollution imply that the pollution path follows three phases. In the first one, the consumers provides any effort in order to reduce the pollution, such an effort is done in the second phase. This effort is just sufficient to limit the rate of pollution growth. When the income per capita is high enough the pollution decrease, this is the third phase. In this paper, we show that the consumer heterogeneity is crucial in order to well characterize the pollution income relationship. Classification JEL : D3, H4, Q2