Analysis of the relationship between GDP and emissions of air pollutants in the EU

Abstract

The problem of the environment is one of the current problems of mankind, which has global character. Mainly, it is problem of developed society that is related to certain reached height of living standard and its premise is the country's potential. Between the level of economic growth and environmental quality, there is a causal relationship, whereby it can be concluded that greater economic activity brings more pollution and vice versa less activity less pollution. The authors of several articles have confirmed the dependence of the form of “inverted U” between pollution and economic growth. In this paper we investigate this issue using cross-sectional data about emissions of air pollutants such is for example CO2 in EU in the years 1980-2013. Due to differences in size of population between countries, emissions and GDP were calculated per capita. In the paper are presented spatial models of changes in emissions per capita compared to changes in GDP per capita, taking into account the spatial aspect. In the calculations we used GeoDa software.