Relationship between economic growth and environment: Environmental Kuznets approach

While; the changes in production and consumption patterns brought by the Industrial Revolution, the population growth, the fabrication, the urbanization, the serial more production demand and competition races of countries are creating the emergence of environmental problems, countries' efforts to enter a process of rapid industrialization and growth have led to the rapid increase of these problems. With this period, the relationship between environment and the economic growth has become the focus of many studies. The most common of these studies is the EKC Hypothesis, which arises from the adaptation of the Kuznets Curve to the environment by Grossman and Krueger. In this study; whether this hypothesis is valid for the groups of "G8" covering eight developed countries and "D8" countries covering eight emerging countries was tested. İn addition to that, whether the hypothesis is related to the development level of the countries was also examined by panel data analysis covering the period 1992-2014. Within the scope of the hypothesis; per capita GDP variables representing CO2 emissions and economic growth are used to represent environmental pollution.The relationship between energy consumption and these variables were also examined. To investigate the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution, three country groups; as "G8", "D8" and "G8&D8" were formed and three models of; the linear, parabolic and cubic forms were established. Consequently, the hypothesis has found to be valid in "G8&D8" and "D8" models. It is concluded that there is a linear relationship between the two variables for the "G8" group. In this context, it has been determined that the economic development levels of the countries don't have a direct relation to environmental pollution or quality. In addition, energy consumption has been found to have a positive effect on environmental pollution.