Economic development and transfrontier shipments of waste in Poland: Spatio-temporal analysis

The aim of the paper is to apply the spatio-temporal Environmental Kuznets Curve (SpEKC) to test the relationship between economic growth and the amount of collected mixed municipal waste. The analysis was conducted at the level of sixty-six Polish sub-regions. The study contained selected environmental indicators. The dependent variable - the amount of municipal waste generated in kilograms per capita characterized the state of the environment. The GDP per capita in constant prices (as an explanatory variable) presented the level of economic development of the sub-regions. In the empirical part of the research there were used spatial panel data models based on EKCs. It determined the levels of economic development, at which the amount of produced wastes has fallen or increased, depending on the wealth of the region. The application of different types of spatial weight matrices was an important element of this modelling. Data obtained the years 2005-2012. Models were estimated in the RCran package.