Azam Muhammad, Khan Abdul Qayyum
Department of Economics, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Mardan, KP, Pakistan.
Department of Management Sciences, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Wah Cantt Campus, Wah Cantt, Pakistan.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2017 Jul;24(19):16407-16417. doi: 10.1007/s11356-017-9299-4. Epub 2017 May 27.
This study examines the impact of economic growth, corruption, health, and poverty on environmental degradation for three countries from ASEAN, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand using annual data over the period of 1994-2014. The relationship between environmental degradation (pollution) by carbon dioxide (CO) emissions and economic growth is examined along with some other variables, namely health expenditure, poverty, agriculture value added growth, industrial value added growth, and corruption. The ordinary least squares (OLS) method is applied as an analytical technique for parameter estimation. The empirical results reveal that almost all variables are statistically significant at the 5% level of significance, whereby test rejects the null hypotheses of non-cointegration, indicating that all variables play an important role in affecting the environment across countries. Empirical results also indicate that economic growth has significant positive impact, while health expenditures show significantly negative impact on the environment. Corruption has significant positive effect on environment in the case of Malaysia; while in the case of Indonesia and Thailand, it has insignificant results. However, for the individual analysis across countries, the regression estimate suggests that economic growth has a significant positive relationship with environment for Indonesia, while it is found insignificantly negative and positive in the case of Malaysia and Thailand, respectively, during the period under the study. Empirical findings of the study suggest that policy-makers require to make technological-friendly environment sequentially to surmount unregulated pollution, steady population transfers from rural areas to urban areas are also important, and poverty alleviation and better health provision can also help to improve the environment.
本研究利用1994年至2014年的年度数据，考察了经济增长、腐败、健康和贫困对东盟三个国家（即印度尼西亚、马来西亚和泰国）环境退化的影响。研究分析了二氧化碳（CO）排放造成的环境退化（污染）与经济增长之间的关系，以及其他一些变量，即卫生支出、贫困、农业增加值增长、工业增加值增长和腐败。采用普通最小二乘法（OLS）作为参数估计的分析技术。实证结果表明，几乎所有变量在5%的显著性水平上都具有统计学意义，由此检验拒绝了非协整的原假设，表明所有变量在影响各国环境方面都发挥着重要作用。实证结果还表明，经济增长具有显著的正向影响，而卫生支出对环境具有显著的负向影响。在马来西亚，腐败对环境有显著的正向影响；而在印度尼西亚和泰国，其影响不显著。然而，对于各国的个体分析，回归估计表明，在研究期间，印度尼西亚的经济增长与环境呈显著的正相关关系，而马来西亚和泰国的经济增长与环境分别呈不显著的负相关和正相关关系。该研究的实证结果表明，政策制定者需要逐步营造有利于技术发展的环境，以克服无管制的污染，稳定农村人口向城市的转移也很重要，扶贫和改善卫生条件也有助于改善环境。
