Revisiting the Environmental Kuznets Curve: a semi-parametric analysis on the role of market structure on environmental pollution

The scope of this paper is to assess the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis by focusing for the first time in the literature on the impact of market structure on industrial pollution proxied by the level of toxic chemical releases. For this reason, we used a flexible semiparametric fixed effects regression estimator in the spirit of Baltagi and Li (Ann Econ Finance 3(1):103–116, 2002). The empirical analysis is based on a panel data set including industrial facilities for the US states over the 1987–2012 period. Contrary to the parametric results, we uncover an inverted “U-shaped” relationship between industrial output and toxic chemical releases when we account for the presence of market concentration. © 2017, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany.