Environmental Quality and Income Inequality: The Impact of Redistribution on Direct Household Emissions in Italy

Abstract

This paper investigates the relation between income distribution and direct households’ emissions in Italy. Our results seem to confirm some recent articles concerned with income-pollution relationship in other countries. Indeed, our empirical analysis shows that decreasing inequality would lead to higher aggregate emissions, whereas increasing inequality would reduce environmental problems. By going into a deeper inquiry of such results, we identify some weaknesses in the framework proposed by the literature, namely the shape of emission intensities distribution. We show that changes in such distribution might lead to opposite conclusions. [JEL numbers: Q01; Q56; D12]