The Political Economy of Environment-Development Relationships

该项目的主要目标是更好地理解经济增长、民主和环境质量之间的关系。现在，这是一个突出的政策问题。国内和国际机构的决策者需要了解世界上一些最贫穷国家的政治改革和加速增长将如何影响全球环境。理论模型表明，收入增长与污染之间的关系可能是正的，也可能是负的。生产的增加会造成更多的污染，但收入的增加会加剧对环境保护的要求。关于这个问题的实证研究表明，一旦一个国家的收入达到一定水平，几种形式的污染似乎随着经济增长而下降。关于这个话题的研究在很大程度上忽略了一个事实，即污染控制是一项由政府提供的公共产品。这样做的一个后果是，先前关于增长与环境质量关系的研究结果可能存在缺陷，因为它们将经济增长的环境影响与政治改革的影响混为一谈。也就是说，一些归因于增长的环境影响实际上可能是由于政治制度的跨国差异。第二个后果是，该行业不了解政治变革对环境的影响，因此无法对最近民主化趋势的环境影响或可能促进环境保护的各种政治改革提供可靠的见解。鉴于世界上一些最贫穷国家的政治体制在过去十年中发生了深刻的变化，其中一些国家现在正在蓬勃发展，这些都是严重的缺点。本项目将建立非民主政府下公共产品供给的理论模型，并对其进行实证估计。这里首要关注的公益是环境保护。初步调查和收到的关于公共选择的文献表明，相对于民主国家，非民主政权可能提供的公共产品不足，因为它们不能代表某些部分人口的利益，因此在制定政策时忽视了这些非代表群体的利益。这将成为深入研究非民主政府公共产品供给的理论起点。由此产生的模型将被纳入一般均衡框架，该框架将(i)将一国的环境政策与其收入和政府形式联系起来，（ii）将污染水平与环境政策、全经济产出和产出组成联系起来，以及（iii）将产出组成与收入和环境政策联系起来。主要目标是对该模型的所有组成部分进行经验估计。特定国家和年份的政府形式将以其选择行政长官的方法（选举与非选举）、行政长官的类型（总统、总理、君主、军事统治者等）、政党竞争程度、立法机构的有效性（有效、无效、不存在）和类似变量的信息为特征。环境污染水平将以来自许多国家和年份的监测点的二氧化硫、烟雾和重颗粒物水平数据来表示。将以同样的方式审查几种水污染物水平的跨国差异以及提供诸如获得卫生设施、安全饮用水和公共保健等与环境有关的公共产品。对产出构成的分析将包括那些对产生特定污染物负有最大责任的工业。例如，二氧化硫的主要人为来源是化石燃料燃烧（用于发电、家庭供暖和运输）、金属精炼和某些工业过程，因此这些行业必须单独代表。有了对相关关系的经验估计，就有可能更准确地评估政治改革和经济增长对环境的各自影响。

The primary goal of this project is to better understand the relationship between economic growth, democracy, and environmental quality. This is now a prominent policy question. Decision makers in domestic and international agencies need to know how political reform and accelerating growth in some of the world's poorest nations will affect the global environment. Theoretical models show that the relationship between growth in income and pollution could be positive or negative. Increasing production causes more pollution to be generated, but higher income can intensify demands for environmental protection. Empirical research on this subject indicates that several forms of pollution seem to decline with economic growth once a country's income reaches a certain level. Research on this topic has largely ignored the fact that pollution control is a public good, provided by government. One consequence of this is that results from prior research on the growth environmental quality relationship may be flawed because they confound the environmental effects of economic growth with the effects of political reform. That is, some of the environmental effects attributed to growth may actually be due to cross country variations in political institutions. A second consequence is that the profession is uninformed about the environmental effects of political change, and thus can offer no credible insights on the environmental implications of the recent trend toward democratization or on kinds of political reforms that are likely to foster environmental protection. These are serious shortcomings in light the fact that political institutions in some of the world's poorest nations have changed profoundly during the last decade and some are now growing vigorously. This project will develop a theoretical model of public goods provision under non-democratic government, and estimate it empirically. The public good of primary concern here is environmental protection. Preliminary inquiry, and the received literature on public choice, gives some indication that non democratic regimes are likely to under provide public goods relative to democracies because they fail to represent the interests of some segments of the population, and accordingly ignore benefits accruing to these non represented groups in making policy. This will serve as the starting point for a thorough theoretical investigation of public goods provision in non-democratic government. The resulting model will then be incorporated in a general equilibrium framework that (i) relates a country's environmental policy to its income and form of government, (ii) relates pollution levels to environmental policy, economy wide output, and the composition of output, and (iii) relates the composition of output to income and environmental policy. The main objective is to estimate all components of this model empirically. The form of government in a given country and year will be characterized with information on its method of selecting the chief executive (elective vs. non elective,) the type of chief executive (president, premier, monarch, military ruler, etc.), the degree of party competition, the effectiveness of the legislature (effective, ineffective, non existent,) and similar variables. Levels of environmental pollution will be represented with data from monitoring sites in a wide range of countries and years on levels of sulfur dioxide, smoke, and heavy particulates. Cross country differences in levels of several of water pollutants and provision of such environmentally related public goods as access to sanitation facilities, safe drinking water, and public health will be examined in the same fashion. The analysis of output composition will be structured to incorporate those industries most responsible for generating specific pollutants. For example, the primary man made SO2sources are fossil fuel combustion (for electricity production, home heating, and transportation,) metal refining, and certain industrial processes, so these industries must be represented individually. With empirical estimates of the relevant relationships, it will be possible to more accurately assess the separate effects of political reform and economic growth on the environment.