Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/191457 
Year of Publication: 
2007
Series/Report no.: 
IRENE Working Paper No. 07-01
Publisher: 
University of Neuchâtel, Institute of Economic Research (IRENE), Neuchâtel
Abstract: 
Although panel data have been used intensively by a wealth of studies investigating the GDP-pollution relationship, the poolability assumption used to model these data is almost never addressed. This paper applies a strategy to test the poolability assumption with methods robust to functional misspecification. Nonparametric poolability tests are performed to check the temporal and spatial homogeneity of the panel and their results are compared with the conventional F-tests for a balanced panel of 48 Spanish provinces on four air pollutant emissions (CH4, CO, CO2 and NMVOC) over the 1990-2002 period. We show that temporal homogeneity may allow the pooling of the data and drive to well-defined nonparametric and parametric cross-sectional U-inverted shapes for all air pollutants. However, the presence of spatial heterogeneity makes this shape compatible with different timeseries patterns in every province - mainly increasing or decreasing depending on the pollutant. These results highlight the extreme sensitivity of the income-pollution relationship to region- or country-specific factors.
Subjects: 
Environmental Kuznets Curve
Air pollutants
Non/Semiparametric estimations
Poolability tests
JEL: 
C14
C23
O40
Q53
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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