Ecological Footprint Inequality across Countries: The Role of Environment Intensity, Income and Interaction Effects

Xarxa de Referencia en Economia Aplicada XREAP2012-17

32 Pages Posted: 2 Oct 2012

See all articles by Juan Antonio Duro

Juan Antonio Duro

Rovira i Virgili University - Department of Economics

Jordi Teixido-Figueras

European University Institute

Date Written: October 2, 2012

Abstract

Recently, White (2007) analysed the international inequalities in Ecological Footprints per capita (EF hereafter) based on a two-factor decomposition of an index from the Atkinson family (Atkinson (1970)). Specifically, this paper evaluated the separate role of environment intensity (EF/GDP) and average income as explanatory factors for these global inequalities. However, in addition to other comments on their appeal, this decomposition suffers from the serious limitation of the omission of the role exerted by probable factorial correlation (York et al. (2005)). This paper proposes, by way of an alternative, a decomposition of a conceptually similar index like Theil’s (Theil, 1967) which, in effect, permits clear decomposition in terms of the role of both factors plus an inter-factor correlation, in line with Duro and Padilla (2006). This decomposition might, in turn, be extended to group inequality components (Shorrocks, 1980), an analysis that cannot be conducted in the case of the Atkinson indices. The proposed methodology is implemented empirically with the aim of analysing the international inequalities in EF per capita for the 1980-2007 period and, amongst other results, we find that, indeed, the interactive component explains, to a significant extent, the apparent pattern of stability observed in overall international inequalities.

Keywords: ecological footprint, international environmental distribution, inequality decomposition

Suggested Citation

Duro, Juan Antonio and Teixido-Figueras, Jordi Josep, Ecological Footprint Inequality across Countries: The Role of Environment Intensity, Income and Interaction Effects (October 2, 2012). Xarxa de Referencia en Economia Aplicada XREAP2012-17, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2155693 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2155693

Juan Antonio Duro (Contact Author)

Rovira i Virgili University - Department of Economics ( email )

Tarragona
Spain

Jordi Josep Teixido-Figueras

European University Institute ( email )

Villa Schifanoia
133 via Bocaccio
Firenze (Florence), Tuscany 50014
Italy

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