With the aim of checking the relationship between income growth and global warming, the present study analyzes a global environmental Kuznets curve for a sample of 187 countries through a spatial econometric approach. An EKC for conventional per capita CO2 emissions was run on per capita income and its square value, controlling for per capita exports, per capita energy consumption, a dummy variable indicating the countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol. The results suggested that there is evidence of an inverted U shaped EKC, that is, growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity. However, the incorporation of a cubic term for per capita income shows that emissions eventually return to increase at a very high level of growth, leading the estimated EKC has an N shape. Furthermore, another finding was that there are evidences that countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol reduced significantly their per capita CO2 emissions.
Environmental Kuznets Curve; per capita CO2 emissions; spatial econometrics; Kyoto Protocol
