Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
second was the 1987 Montreal Protocol that obliged developed countries
to reduce their CFC emissions to half 1986 levels by June 1999 and limits
the future consumption of CFCs by developing countries. He used the
type of regime as a proxy to the personal characteristics of decision- or
policy-makers. Gastil's classii cation of countries (1987) had been used to
construct the type of regime, market structure, shares of national income
and time horizon of policy-makers. The country's area was used as a
proxy for its resource endowments and population was proxied for labour
force. Both of these data were taken from the
World Fact Book
(1988).
Finally, the data on real GNP in 1987 US dollars were gathered from the
World Petroleum Institute (1990/91). Congleton arrived at three main
conclusions. First, authoritarian regimes faced a higher price for pollution
abatement than democratic governments. Second, authoritarian regimes
had uncertain career paths and shorter terms of oi ce, and thereby would
tend to adopt less stringent environmental policies and regulations than
democratic ones. Third, they were less willing to sign international agree-
ments to protect their environments. The author concluded that political
institutions, rather than economic endowments, technology or market
institutions, would determine the level of domestic and international
environmental policies and regulations in the country.
Also Panayotou (1997) presented a study that focused on the policy
scope and provided a more analytical and structural approach to the
income-environment relationship. The roles of economic growth and pop-
ulation density were also explored. He examined the relationship between
income growth rate and policy variables against the level of sulphur dioxide
using panel data for 30 developed and developing countries for the period
1982 to 1994. The data for SO
2
were gathered from the GEMS, while
those for GDP were obtained from the Penn World Table (1995) and were
measured in terms of 1985 constant US dollars as purchasing power parity
(adjusted GDP i gures) was not available beyond 1992. He used proxies
for the quality of institutions to represent environmental policies. He
used i ve indicators to represent the quality of institutions obtained from
Knack and Keefer (1995). These indicators were enforcement of contracts,
quality of bureaucracy, the rule of law, corruption in government and the
risk of expropriation. Panayotou found an inverted U-shaped relation-
ship with a per capita turning point just under $5000. He also found that
the emission elasticity with respect to the improvements in the quality of
institutions was much higher than those of economic growth and popula-
tion density: a 50 per cent improvement in the ei cacy of institutions and
policies at income levels between $10 000 and $20 000 could result in 50 per
cent reduction in the concentrations of SO
2
. On the other hand, at lower
income levels, the same improvement did not result in a similar reduction
