Any Signs of Green Growth? A Spatial Panel Analysis of Regional Air Pollution in South Korea
研究韩国省级空气排放数据，检验2009年国家绿色增长战略实施后经济增长是否变得更绿色，发现主要存在倒N型环境库兹涅茨曲线，但考虑空间溢出效应后，没有证据表明区域经济增长变得更绿色。
Abstract Focusing on air emissions in South Korean provinces, we investigate whether economic growth has become greener since the implementation of the national green growth strategy in 2009. Given the relevance of regional elements in the economic and environmental policies, the focus lies on spatial aspects. That is, spillovers from nearby provinces are controlled for in a SLX model by means of the Han–Phillips estimator for dynamic panel data. Our results suggest mainly the existence of inverted N-shaped Environmental Kuznets curves for sulfur oxides (SO X ) and total suspended particles (TSP). As the curves initially decrease strongly with increasing income, the main cleanup is achieved with the mean income level. However, abatement of the remaining TSP emissions only takes place at higher income levels. While the fixed effects estimations indicate that per capita SO X and TSP emissions have been significantly lower since 2009, the effects vanish once spatial interactions are taken into account and no evidence is found that regional economic growth has become greener. Apart from economic growth, population density and energy consumption are the main drivers of emission changes, with the latter having robust spatial spillovers. The respective spatial interactions decrease with increasing distance and become insignificant after 150 km.