Title: Quantifying the Global and National Dynamics of Environmental Kuznets Curve using Chebyshev Distance in Feature Space
Speaker: Amir Ranjouriheravi
Time: 11.08.2022, Thursday, 13:00
Thesis Committee Members:
Asst. Prof. Dr.Mehmet Fatih Ulu (Advisor, Koç University)
Asst. Prof. Dr. Khaleddin Rzayev (Koç University)
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Enes Eryarsoy (Sabanci University)
Asst. Prof. Dr. Mustafa Hayri Tongarlak (Boğaziçi University)
Assoc. Researcher. Dr. Farzin Kamari (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany)
Abstract:
There is an unresolved imbroglio regarding whether the global environmental
issues are approaching the verge of irrecoverability, endangering the viability of living
species and humanity. While the concept of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) is
widely accepted in support for perpetual economic growth as the essential fuel for
environmental sustainability, the contrasting evidence also designates industrialization
and mass production as the principal cause of environmental deterioration. To date,
despite its crucial significance in global policy making, little has been done to quantify
the dynamics of the EKC on a national and global level. Here, we introduce a
quantification metric in a three-dimensional feature space of the available global panel
data for annual CO 2 emissions per capita, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and
year. We propose the Chebyshev distance between the data points and the vertices of
the cubic feature space as a metric for the national and global EKC. Based on our
proposed methodology, we classify thirty countries with the greatest global cumulative
CO 2 emissions in five categories and further explain the dynamics of EKC in each
category. Our results demonstrate that France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are
aligned with the EKC hypothesis, but other countries are more consistent with non-EKC
scenarios. We also show how Poland and Mexico have gone through constant economic
growth without additional CO 2 emissions. Lastly, we discuss the relative performance of
countries on a global level according to our methodology and propose directions for
future research.