TTIP and the Environmental Kuznets Curve

This paper uses data on emissions per capita of ten air pollutants and municipal waste to investigate the potential impact of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on the empirical validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Using a dataset of the twenty-eight EU members and of the U.S. over a twenty-five year period, the results in this paper provide robust and statistically significant evidence consistent with the EKC argument for CO2, CH4, and HFCs/PFCs/SF6, respectively. Further, the paper finds a monotonically increasing relationship between income per capita and emissions per capita in the cases of GHGs, SF6, and NO2, respectively. In addition, this paper finds that the EKC’s turning point values of each pollutant are sensitive to the econometric approach and/or to the employed control variables. Finally, the study reports statistically significant evidence suggesting a U-shaped relationship between emissions per capita of SO2 or SOx and income per capita.