Is there a Long-Term Relationship between Agricultural GHG Emissions and Productivity Growth? The Case of Italian Agriculture

The paper adopts a long single-country panel dataset (Italian regions) to analyse the relationship between agricultural GreenHouse Gases (GHG) emissions and agricultural productivity growth and, thus, to assess emissions sustainability. The modelling approach and the empirical specification include the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) as one of the possible outcomes. The hypothesis of emission sustainability is assessed by estimating alternative panel model specifications with conventional and GMM estimators. The adopted panel concerns the 1951-2008 and 1980-2008 emissions of methane and nitrous oxide properly reconstructed for the Italian regional agriculture. Results suggest that, though a significant relationship between agricultural GHG emissions and productivity growth may exist, it tends to be monotonic. Therefore, even if sustainability is accepted for some GHG, no robust evidence of the EKC emerges across the different specifications, estimators and periods.