How effective is government spending on environmental protection in a developing country?

Abstract

PurposeThe objective of this paper is twofold as follows: first, it explores the relationship between economic growth and the environment in the context of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) in Iran, as a semi-industrialized and largest developing economy in the Middle East. Second, it investigates the effectiveness of government spending on environmental protection.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses the ecological footprint data and an ARDL model to gauge the income and government spending effects on environmental improvement. This method avoids the problems associated with using the regression including a squared income.FindingsThe results find no evidence for a turning point in the income–pollution relationship and no significant impact of government spending on reducing footprint. We conjecture that the structure of the economy and the weak institutional quality may explain the results.Research limitations/implicationsThis includes limited time series data on institutional quality indices and their small variations over time.Practical implicationsCreating an environmental fund using the oil windfall and applying environmental tax/subsidies policies will help address increasing environmental challenges in energy-rich developing countries. Education and public awareness about environmental problems and their impacts on the standard of living are also nonexpensive but effective ways to increase citizen's engagement towards improving environment.Social implicationsThe EKC may take different forms in various countries depending on their economic structure and institution qualities.Originality/valueThe paper uses the ARDL method rather than a commonly used regression with a squared income to estimate the EKC. It also uses ecological footprint as a measure of environmental damage. Exploring government effectiveness in managing public good is also novel in the empirical literature.

Research on China's Environmental Governance Mode: Quality Driven or Quantity Driven?

“…The reasons are as follows: before 2006, China mainly adopted the "GDP only" political performance assessment system, in which regional officials mainly concentrated on the economic development of the areas under their jurisdiction (Li et al, 2022) and paid only perfunctory attention to the environmental protection and governance requirements raised by the central government. Moreover, some officials withheld some EG costs and turned them into their own "head fees" (Moshiri and Daneshmand, 2020). Finally, the implementation of environmental protection policies and capital investment are greatly discounted, which is also the main reason why the EGE and EGI cannot substantially ameliorate the situation of environmental pollution.…”

“…From the perspective of current environmental protection practices in China, local governments mainly formulate and implement EG policies (Pan and Tang, 2021;Wang et al, 2021), environmental audits (Patriarca et al, 2017;Cao et al, 2022) and EGI (Basoglu and Uzar, 2019;Li and Ramanathan, 2020) to improve environmental quality, and achieved certain effects (Xiong et al, 2020;Jiang et al, 2020). However, some scholars pointed out that due to imperfect legal systems (Moshiri and Daneshmand, 2020), the unreasonable allocation of fiscal environmental protection expenditures (López et al, 2011), the existence of corruption Zhao et al, 2022) and spatial spillover effect (He et al, 2018;Zhao et al, 2021), the EG measures implemented by local governments cannot effectively reduce pollution emissions.…”

Türkiye’de Gelir, Enerji Tüketimi, Ticari Açıklık ve Çevre Koruma Harcamaları: ÇKE Hipotezinin Bölgesel Analizi

“…Örneğin Yavan & Hotunluoğlu (2018) Türkiye'de belediyelerin yapmış olduğu çevre harcamaları ile hava kirliliği arasında pozitif bir ilişki elde etmişlerdir. Bu sonucu destekler şekilde Moshiri & Daneshmand (2020) ise İran'daki çevre koruma harcamalarının kirliliği azaltmada etkin olmadığı sonucuna varmışlardır. Bu sonuçlar çevre koruma harcamalarının tek başına kirliliği azaltmada yetersiz kalabildiğini göstermektedir.…”

“…Bu sonuçlar Türkiye üzerine çalışma yapan Yavan & Hotunluoğlu (2018)'nun çalışmasını destekler niteliktedir. Ayrıca Moshiri & Daneshmand (2020)'ın çalışmasından elde edilen sonuçlar da bu çalışmada ortaya çıkan sonuçlarla örtüşmektedir.…”

Environmental governance investment and Air Quality: Based on China’s provincial panel data

“…However, there are limited researches on whether government investment in environmental governance will have a positive effect on air pollution. On the contrary, some researchers deemed that government expenditures on environmental protection alone does not play a significant role in contributing to better environmental quality and improvements in quality of governance is the key to deal with environmental protection (Gholipour and Farzanegan, 2018;Moshiri and Daneshmand, 2019).…”