This paper reviews both theory and empirical work on economic growth and the environment. We develop four simple growth models to help us identify key features generating sustainable growth. We show how some combination of technological progress in abatement, intensified abatement, shifts in the...

We demonstrate that a key empirical finding in environmental economics - The Environmental Kuznets Curve - and the core model of modern macroeconomics - the Solow model - are intimately related. Once we amend the Solow model to incorporate technological progress in abatement, the EKC is a...

The relationship between economic growth and the environment is not well understood: we have only limited understanding of the basic science involved and very limited data. Because of these difficulties it is especially important to develop a series of relatively simple theoretical models that...

This paper questions current empirical practice in the study of growth. We argue that much of the modern empirical growth literature is based on assumptions concerning regressors, residuals, and parameters which are implausible both from the perspective of economic theory as well as from the...