Though the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) was originally developed to model the ambient concentrations of pollutants, most subsequent applications focused on pollution emissions. Yet, previous research suggests that it is more likely that economic growth could eventually reduce the...

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) has been the dominant approach among economists to modeling aggregate pollution emissions and ambient pollution concentrations over the last quarter century. Despite this, the EKC was criticized almost from the start and decomposition approaches have been...