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Technical progress and pollution abatement: an economic view of selected technologies and practices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2001

Dennis Anderson
Affiliation:
Imperial College Centre for Energy Policy and Technology, 48 Prince's Gardens, London SW7 2PE. Tel: 44(0)20 594 6776. Fax: 44(0)20 581 0245.

Abstract

The paper first presents evidence from the engineering literature on air and water pollution control, which shows that, when the pollution abatement technologies are in place, large reductions in pollution have been achieved at costs that are small relative to the costs of production. A simulation model is then developed to study the effects of technical progress on pollution abatement, and applied to particular cases in developing countries. The results are compared with the projections of an environmental Kuznets curve: they reproduce the latter if policies were not to be introduced until per capita incomes reached levels comparable to those of the industrial countries when they first introduced their policies; but show dramatically lower and earlier peaks if policies were to be introduced earlier. The conclusion is shown to apply more generally, and it is argued that developing countries can aspire to addressing their environmental problems at a much earlier phase of development than the industrial countries before them.

Type
Theory and Applications
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The research for this paper was made possible by my Fellowship with the UK Economic and Social Science Research Council (Global Environmental Change Programme), for which I express my thanks. I also thank Swee Chua for comments on a previous draft, and whose own research has been most beneficial for me. Three referees also gave me several helpful comments.