EKC and Macroeconomics Aspects of Well-being: a Critical Vision for a Sustainable Future

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate a modified version of the environmental Kuznets curve by including human development and governance as a macroeconomics determinant of sustainability. For this purpose, our study uses the Johansen panel cointegration testing to verify the existence of long-run relationships and we employed the fixed effects models which founded on the panel-based error correction ones using data for 26 African countries over the period 1990–2013. Our findings highlight that there exists a quadratic relationship among the negative genuine saving (GS−) and the human development variable. This implies that the assumed EKC hypothesis is verified for the modified version of EKC. The empirical evidence records the fact that the ecological issue in the Millennium Development Goals background is deeply influenced by the sustainability aspects. Further, our findings recommended that African countries should take seriously the human aspect. Further, the academic researchers, policymakers, and international organizations should unify around a specific and clear definition of the sustainability notion to reach a verdict consensus about his measure and the way of computing by taking into consideration the diversity and the specificities of each region.