Recent studies of the environmental Kuznets curve raise questions regarding the relationship between environmental indicators and GDP and the fundamental reasons that explain this relationship. In response, this thesis presents one-sector and two-sector models to analyze the alternative causal relationships between an environmental indicator and GDP at different stages of economic development. These models analyze how economic scale, technology, preferences, and economic structure influence the causality and shape of the relationship. These theoretical studies are followed by two empirical studies. The first tests the causal relationship between CO2 emissions and GDP in Canadian manufacturing industries. The second explores several factors as the fundamental causes that influence the CO2 emissions in the same industries. Factors, such as economic scale, preferences, technological progress, structural change, and energy input, are found to be crucial in the determination of CO2 emissions. The empirical results are positive, but there are data limitations. The empirical studies can be re-evaluated as more data becomes available.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.80319 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Li, Zhe, 1974- |
| Contributors | Henning, John (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Agricultural Economics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002102073, proquestno: AAIMQ98688, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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