Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC): A Manual provides a comprehensive summary of the EKC, summarizing work on this economic tool that can analyze environmental pollution problems. By enabling users to reconcile environmental and economic development policies, Environmental Kuznets Curve studies lend themselves to the investigation of the energy-growth and finance-energy nexus. The book obviates a dependence on outmoded tools, such as carrying capacity, externalities, ecosystem valuation and cost benefit analysis, while also encouraging flexible approaches to a variety of challenges. - Provides a comprehensive summary of EKC studies, including advances in econometrics, literature reviews and historical perspectives - Outlines solutions to common problems in applying EKC techniques by reviewing major case studies - Explores frequently-utilized proxies for environmental quality

It is possible to "grow out of" some environmental problems, but there is nothing automatic about doing so. Action tends to be taken where there are generalized local costs and substantial private and social benefit. Where the costs of environmental degredation are borne by others (by the poor or by other countries), there are few incentives to alter damaging behavior. Trade, debt, and other macroeconomic policy variables seem to have little generalized effect on the environment.

The ultimate goal of environmental policy is reducing pollution. Attention to environmental problems in the social sciences has brought some bold generalizations about causes of good results, but almost no systematic cross-national studies that flesh out major theoretical arguments and test those claims with data. This study makes a seminal contribution to that effort in two ways. First, by taking environmental outcomes over the last thirty years as the central dependent variable, it provides a basis for evaluating national performance in reducing environmental problems. Second, by developing a data set including performance in a number of countries and elaborating on major explanations of environmental performance found in the literature, this study provides the most rigorous available analysis of the determinants of environmental performance. In so doing, it challenges what is probably the conventional wisdom in the social sciences.

This volume presents the latest thinking concerning the effect of population growth on economic development and other areas of global concern. The authors address the complex issues that currently face both developed and developing country governments in all areas of population growth, exploring impacts within their country and internationally.