Does constitutional protection of the environment matter for environmental quality?

Abstract

This paper extends the literature on the role of institutions on environmental quality, by assessing the impact of constitutional environmental protection (CEP) on environmental quality. Using a panel dataset covering 119 countries over the period 1990 to 2020, and after employing Entropy Balancing Methodology (EBM), we find that, adoption of CEP significantly increases environmental quality. We demonstrate that this finding is extremely robust to different alternative estimation methods such as propensity score matching (PSM), the Inverse Probability Treatment Weighting (IPTW), the Augmented Inverse Probability Treatment Weighting (AIPTW) and the dynamic panel analysis. Moreover, we show that the effect of constitutional environmental protection varies systematically depending on the region, types of legal origin and the level of pollution. Finally, we provide evidence that state experience in CEP, improves consideration of environmental concerns and consequently increases environmental quality.