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Pollution, Economic Development And Democracy: Evidence From The Mena Countries, Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, Gunther Markwardt

Prof. Dr. Mohammad Reza Farzanegan

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries are among the top emitters of CO2 and SO2 in per capita terms in the world. Our goal is to show that whether investing in the democratic development of countries is an effective tool to make the economic growth in this region more environmentally compatible. We use pooled OLS, country and time fixed and random effects, and system GMM method to estimate the marginal pollution impact of a 1% increase in GDP per capita at different levels of democracy from 1960 to 2005.

Regardless of method of estimation, we can see a …