spatial environmental kuznets curve for asian countries: study of co2 and pm10

environmental kuznets curve (ekc) is one of the known concepts in environmental economics developed dramatically over the last twenty years ago. one of the advances in studying the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality is concerning the spatial autocorrelation of ecological phenomena. the rationale behind spatial environmental kuznets curve (sekc) is similar to ekc including this idea that spatial spillover of dependent variable can be specified as an explanatory variable in the model. using a spatial panel data model, sekc is estimated for co2 and pm10 pollutants in asian countries over the period 1990-2007. the objective of the paper is answering to these research questions: does spatial autocorrelation exist for co2 and pm10 pollutants? moreover, how much are their significance? regarding the findings, spatial autocorrelation can explain changing the level of co2 and pm10 pollutants in asian countries by 10% and 17%, respectively. in addition, an inverted u-shape and a monotonic positive relationship have been found between income per capita and the volume of co2 and pm10 pollutants, respectively.