Economic Development and Environmental Quality Nexus in Developing and Transition Economies ; La relation entre le développement économique et la qualité environnementale dans les économies en cours de développement et en transition

This thesis tackles one of the most debatable and in vogue topics in economics, namely the economic development and environmental quality nexus. Notably, it studies the economic development's effects—in terms of its economic, social, and political dimensions—on the environmental quality for developing and transition economies. Chapter I, which is divided into three key phases, namely theoretical review, empirical exercise, and empirical review, contributes to the literature by giving various insights regarding the link between economic growth and environmental pollution in developing and transition economies. Overall, it reveals that the recent empirical studies, indeed, succeeding to curtail some of the deficiencies suggested by theoretical contributions, might indicate a certain consensus regarding pollution-growth nexus and Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis validity. Chapter II examines the pollution-growth nexus in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, adding to the related empirical literature using the extended EKC hypothesis as a theoretical background. On the one hand, it unveils an increasing nonlinear link between GDP and CO2 at the aggregate level, which is powerfully robust to different estimators and control variables. On the other hand, the country-level analysis reveals that the relationship between GDP and CO2 is characterized by much diversity among CEE countries. Thus, despite an aggregated upward trend, some CEE countries managed to secure both higher GDP and lower CO2 emissions. From a policy perspective, EU policymakers could pay more attention to these countries and amend the current unique environmental policy to account for country-heterogeneities to support economic growth without damaging the environment. Chapter III investigates the aggregated and sector-specific CO2 emissions' responsiveness following exogenous shocks to growth and urbanization, considering a transmission scheme that incorporates two of the widely used instruments in mitigating environmental ...