DATA SCIENCE MS THESIS DEFENSE BY AMİR RANJOURİHERAVİ

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.