Essays of the Pollution Effects on Sustainable Economic Development

Since the arouse of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis rst established by Simon Kuznets in 1950s, the analysis of the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation have become popular among different economic researchers. Some studies tested this relationship by making similar theoretical models (Baldwin(1995), Lieb (2004), Palivos and Varvarigo (2010),etc), while others tested this relationship empirically (Grossman and Krueger (1991), Panayotou (1993), Shak and Bandyopadhyay (1992),etc).

The motivation of my study is to analyze the long-run economic relationship between economic growth and pollution pressures with both theoretical and empirical methods. Pollution is a key indicator of economic growth, but on the other hand it hurts our environment quality as well as the people's health condition. Therefore, Both developed and developing countries need to deliberately deal with this conflict relationship between economic growth and pollution pressures. The results and findings will help us to understand about this relationship better and help the policy makers to make their decisions about solving this conflict situation in a cost efficient way. In addition, not only does this thesis provide a suitable way for policy makers to choose an optimal choice between choosing pollution and economic growth, but also it teaches people how to choose their pollution abatement in order to for them to live longer under pollution.