Notes on environmental regulation and growth

This paper looks at the costs of regulating the environment on economic growth in a model that has increasing returns to scale in production at lower levels of development. It concludes that these costs are low, as are the costs of moving from a non-optimal regulatory policy to an optimal one. The implied shape of the Environmental Kuznets Curve may have one or two humps, but this depends upon the underlying parameters.economic growth; environmental Kuznets curve; environmental policy; greenhouse gases; GHG emissions; increasing returns to scale; Kyoto protocol; environmental regulation.