Return to search

Environmental Policies and   the EKC : To   what extent can national environmental policies contribute to the EKC theory?   Sweden   and EU

The purpose of this thesis is see if national policies regarding aimed at combating climate change could work even if international ones, such as the Kyoto Protocol, are considered to fail. The question was if environmental policies could be included as an explanatory variable for the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). The environmental polices of interest were the market-based instrument, environmental taxes.   First, the hypothesis whether or not Sweden fit the EKC theory is tested, and this proves to be the case when looking at the years 1800-1996. Second, a hypothesis was tested to see if environmental taxes can help decreasing carbon emission intensity further once a country has reached its turning point. Comparing Sweden to six other countries from the European Union show that this is the case, although environmental taxes must be one of many tools and cannot work alone.   The study shows that the role of taxes were significant, thus showing their importance for the work on climate change. It is also observed that national policies do work, while regional, or international, ones are harder to conduct. The importance of national policies is enhanced since they will be guiding countries when deciding whether or not to commit to international policies.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hj-19142
Date January 2012
CreatorsEfraimsson, Sanna
PublisherInternationella Handelshögskolan, Högskolan i Jönköping, IHH, Economics, Finance and Statistics
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Page generated in 0.0016 seconds