The relationship of economic growth and environmental pollution: the case of Turkey

The economic opportunities that brought about by the industrial revolution have led many countries to grow quickly and easily. However, in the industrial sector use of energy inputs such as fossil fuels that harm the environment has raised the question of how healthy the economic growth achieved in this way is. With the first comprehensive research conducted by Grossman and Krueger, the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution has been the subject of investigation for years. In this study, the relationship between environmental pollution and economic growth for Turkey Located between the years 1960-2014 were examined using data on economic growth and CO2 emissions. Since the Co2 emission data were recorded by the World Bank (WB) until 2014, the data between these years were used in the analysis. Within this context, firstly, the concept of economic growth and the theories of economic growth from past to present will be showed. Secondly, environmental pollution and its types and causes will be explained. While the EKC hypothesis and literature review are mentioned again in the second chapter, the econometric application will be included in the last part. As a result of the application, it has been observed that there is a one-way causality relationship from the CO2 variable to the economic growth variable. Thus, the hypothesis that economic growth causes environmental pollution in the study is rejected. In addition, impulse-response and variance decomposition analysis were also used in practice.