Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and labour intensity were almost negative. Accordingly, they concluded
that the sector's pollution/labour ratio was constant across all countries
throughout the development process.
In an earlier study by Grossman et al. (1994), they tried to study the
relationship between the composition and level of local economic activity,
in terms of current income, average lagged income and sectoral composi-
tion of income and concentrations of six criteria of air pollutants across
countries in the United States using panel data from the Aerometric
Information Retrieval System maintained by the US Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA). The air pollutants examined were total sus-
pended particulates (TSPs), SO
2
, NO
x
, CO, ozone (O
3
) and lead (Pb). The
income data used were per capita GDP in 1985 nominal US dollars. They
tried to separate scale, composition and technique ef ects in examining the
relationship between income and pollution. They concluded that composi-
tion of output had a signii cant ef ect on local air quality, however, changes
in the composition did not account for the observed relationship between
output levels and pollution in the case of the United States. With respect to
separating scale and technique ef ects, their results were inconclusive.
Policy and political institutions
As mentioned above, enactment of international legislation and enforce-
ment of environmental policies and regulations are vital in controlling
and minimizing the problems resulting from economic development and
its damaging ef ect on the environment. Despite this, very few authors
have included a policy variable in their studies of the economic-growth-
environment relationship. Congleton (1992) was among the i rst to explore
the ef ect of political institutions on the enactment of environmental
policies and regulations. Using cross-sectional data from 118 countries,
he tested the hypothesis that political institutions, rather than resource
endowments or market structure, determine enactment of environmental
policies and regulations to control pollution. His model depicted the level
of preferred environmental standard as a function of the policy-maker's
share of national income, time horizon, market institutions in the country
and its resource base.
In his analysis, Congleton made several proxies and assumptions due
to the unavailability of data. With respect to the data on domestic envi-
ronmental policies and regulations he assumed that domestic politics
determine whether or not a country would sign a particular covenant or
protocol, so he used the data on signatories of two international agree-
ments. The i rst was the 1985 global convention of the United Nations in
Vienna whereby countries were committed to enact domestic legislation
to reduce emissions of the ozone-depleting substances, mainly CFCs. The
