July-September
2009
Theses
Award, 2010 Environmental Quality and Income
This paper investigates the relation between income distribution and direct households’ emissions in Italy. Our results seem to confirm some recent articles concerned with incomepollution relationship in other countries. Indeed, our empirical analysis shows that decreasing inequality would lead to higher aggregate emissions, whereas increasing inequality would reduceenvironmental problems. By going into a deeper inquiry of such results, we identify some weaknesses in the framework proposed by the literature, namely the shape of emission intensities distribution. We show that changes in such distribution might lead to opposite conclusions. Keywords: emissions, income inequality, household consumption.
*laura.castellucci@uniroma2.it - damato@economia.uniroma2.it - zoli@ sefemeq.uniroma2.it Department SEFEMEQ, Faculty of Economics, University of Rome "Tor Vergata". The authors want to thank the referees for extensive comments on an earlier version of the paper. Any remaining errors are our own. Castellucci gratefully acknowledges professor Anil Markandya for having launched the idea of the special issue and gone through the lengthly process of producing it. Special thanks are also due to professor Piga as the managing editor of the Review. |
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