Incidencia de los factores económicos e institucionales bajo el enfoque de la Curva Medioambiental de Kuznets (EKC): evidencia empírica para el Ecuador y América Latina

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to determine the impact of institutional and economic variables on environmental degradation in Latin America and Ecuador, under the approach of the Kuznets Environmental Curve (EKC), through the analysis of two models. The first uses the Panel Cointegration approach, the Generalized Method of Moments and the Pooled Mean Group, for 16 countries in Latin America in the period 2002-2014; which tried to determine the impact of the institutional indicators on CO2 and the Ecological Footprint (HE). The results allowed us to verify the EKC hypothesis in the case of CO2 emissions as an indicator of environmental degradation, however, in the case of HE, this hypothesis is verified only when the institutional indicators are applied as a synthetic indicator. In both cases, the study indicated that countries are in the growth phase of the curve. The second model used the Cointegration methodology and is based on Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model, applied to Ecuador during the period of 1980-2014 in which the impact of economic variables related to energy was studied, on the CO2 emissions of energy. With these results, the EKC hypothesis is not verified for the Ecuadorian case, however, other findings were presented as the consumption of energy from renewable sources that was not significant for the model, possibly due to the recent implementation of efficient use of renewable energy policies. The forecasts for this model for the year 2025 indicate that there will be an increase in CO2 emissions from Ecuador.