54 / 2015-12-22 15:49:39

Hypothesis and Evidence on the Kuznets Curve of the Relationship between Regional Economic Growth and Carbon Emission in China: Empirical Analysis of a Spatial Econometric Model

carbon emission,environmental kuznets curve,spatial econometric

The problem of global warming worsens continuously and has brought obvious damages to the environment. It is estimated that economic development has accumulatively contributed about 86% of CO2 emission increments in the late 1970s. Therefore, studying the relationships between carbon emission and their driving factors has become an increasingly significant issue. This paper studied the relationship between economic growth and the paths of China's carbon emission via analyzing the economic growth and carbon emission data from 30 provinces in China during 2000-2012 using a spatial panel econometric model. We aimed to test the existence of the Kuznets curve in land-use caused carbon emission. The results showed that the relationship between land carbon emission and economic growth follows the inverse U-shaped Kuznets curve, hence confirming the carbon Kuznets curve hypothesis in China. The estimated results using a spatial autoregressive model showed that economic growth does play a critical role in land carbon emission while industrial structure also has significant impact. In addition, there exists significant spatial correlation between land carbon emission and economic growth, which means that the former could be affected by adjacent provinces. When economic growth reaches 28.01 million yuan per square kilometers（km2), the contradiction between economic growth and land carbon emission is gradually alleviated. These findings provide new insights and valuable information for optimizing land use and carbon emission in China.