Intl Conference on Economics, Finance & Business, Prague

TO BE RICH OR TO BE GREEN- THE DILEMMA BETWEEN GDP AND CO2 EMISSIONS PER CAPITA

STEFAN RAYCHEV, BLAGA MADZHUROVA, DOBRINKA STOYANOVA

Abstract:

The offered study tackles the problem of whether a country can be synchronously rich and "green". The toolkit applied to resolve this dilemma, on the one hand, involves a review of theoretical sources on the issue, and on the other hand, necessitates a conduct of an empirical study of the dependencies between economic growth, and in particular GDP per capita and carbon dioxide emissions (CO2 ) per capita. This is an assessment method of the eventual impact of economic growth on environmental degradation. An evaluation of the theories indicates that a relationship exists between economic growth and environmental degradation, however it is multidimensional. The outcomes of the in-depth analysis of the relationship between economic prosperity and environmental sustainability, after applying correlation and regression analyses, along with the RANSAC regressor, actually reveal that there is a positive relationship between CO2 emissions and GDP per capita. The visualization of the results gives a clear idea of the relationship for each year of the research period. These findings contribute to the current debate concerning the balance between economic growth and environmental protection.

Keywords: Green transition, GDP per capita, Economic growth, CO2 emissions per capita

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