Impacts of regional productivity growth, decoupling and pollution leakage

Abstract

Impacts of regional productivity growth, decoupling and pollution leakage. Regional Studies. This paper examines the issues of decoupling regional economic growth and pollution and the extent to which pollution effects spillover regional/national borders. Specifically, a UK, regionally disaggregated, computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is used to investigate the relationship between economic growth and the level of CO2 emissions posited by the ‘environmental Kuznets curve’ (EKC) conjecture using production accounting principle (PAP) and consumption accounting principle (CAP) environmental accounting methods. The simulation results suggest that at the regional level the existence of an EKC relationship depends on the source of regional growth and the how this relationship is specified.