The relationship between economic growth and environmental quality: the contributions of economic structure and agricultural policies

Objectives of this paper is to verify whether the relationship between the level of per capita income and the environment quality, for the Italian regions, follows the prescription of an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), taking into account the contribution of agriculture and rural areas. The Arellano-Bond two-step dynamic panel data GMM estimator has been applied to a data set of the 20 Italian administrative regions referred to the 2000-‘06 years. The quality of environment is represented by the level of per capita CO2 emissions from the whole economy and the level of per capita CO2 emissions from agriculture. The regression results show that i) the EKC prescription holds for the Italian regions, ii) the more agricultural regions are found on the rising section of the curve; iii) a greater intensity of expenditure under the RDP regional agro-environmental and forestry measures is positively associated to a more degraded environment.