The relationship between economic growth and environment in the MENA Region: An environmental Kuznets curve

This paper studies the relationship between economic growth and environmental performance through the assessment of Kuznets curve which has two shapes. The first takes an inverted U- shape, meaning that pollution increases with GDP growth up to a certain limit after which, it declines. The second takes N-shape, implying that pollution increases with the GDP growth to a maximum point, then it declines, till a minimum beyond which pollution starts to increase again with GDP growth. The relationship between per capita GDP and a set of air pollutants variables are explored. These variables are: per capita CO2 emissions, Nitrous oxide emissions and the other greenhouse gases (HFC, PFC and SF6) emissions. The models used are, for Egypt, ARDL Model during the studied period (1965-2013), and for the MENA region, fixed effects model is tested based on a Hausman test during the covered period (1980-2011). The results support the applicability of the environmental Kuznets curvein its inverted –U shape for Egypt and for MENA region in both forms between the same variables.