Empirical Analysis Of The Relationship Between Environmental Pollution And Economic Development

The people’s republic of China has been established for 60 years and the reform and opening up until now has 31 years, China’s economic, political, cultural and social construction, all made great achievements, but it also faces many serious problems, among which environmental pollution is one of the most important.This paper is divided into five chapters:the first chapter is introduction. We first analyze the situation of the economic development and environmental pollution of the United Kingdom and the United States since the industrial revolution, both these two countries experienced a "pollution first, treatment later" process. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory, in the early stages of industrialization and urbanization, increased environmental pollution is a kind of a universal phenomenon, has a rational side. This is the backgrounds of EKC hypothesis to be established. Then we summed up the experience of China’s reform and opening up:China has achieved rapid economic growth as well as great resource consumption and environmental pollution, the industrial structure is low and economic development is inefficient. Finally we go to the meaning and the designation of this study.ChapterⅡis the theory and literature review. First, we carry out the developing process of the modern theory of economic growth, and do a briefly the derivation and description to the focus models. Then we review the EKC literature from the meaning, economic interpretation, explaining model and domestic and foreign empirical studies of EKC. Finally, we review the theory of productivity and efficiency and focuses on the CRS and VRS model.In ChapterⅢwe do a more detailed empirical analysis of the relationship between the level of economic development and pollution levels based on the 2003-2007 data. This paper introduces some new method to EKC empirical studies, and gives a new interpretation of the causes of inverted U relationship. All regions are grouped according to per capita GDP, and we found that pollution emissions of moderate levels of groups are significantly higher than that of low group and high group, and these differences are statistically significant. Panel regression analysis shows that after added the control variable the relationship between pollution score and per capita GDP is still inverted U-type, but the control variables have great impact on the inflection point. This study shows that human capital has a negative impact on pollution scores. Economic growth has led to the improvement of human capital stock, thereby contributing to reduce environmental pollution.In ChapterⅣwe calculate environmental efficiency of the provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) with the DEA method, and analyze the influencing factors of environmental efficiency. From viewpoint of CRS environmental efficiency, the highest is the eastern region, followed by middle region and western region is the lowest. The industrial structure and trade openness are the main influencing factors of environmental efficiency. The higher the proportion of secondary industry and tertiary industry is the lower environmental efficiency scores. Open2 is negatively correlated with the environmental efficiency scores. This shows that when our country undertakes the transfer of international industry, we also undertake the transfer of pollutants.ChapterⅤis Conclusion section, focuses on the conclusions, innovation and contribution, inadequacies of this paper and follow-up study thinking.