Investigating the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis and pollution haven hypothesis in India: an ARDL approach

The study examines the validity of the inverted U-shaped environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis and pollution haven hypothesis (PHH) in India during the period 1970 to 2018. Adopting autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method, the study disproves the existence of the EKC by indicating a U-shaped curve between environmental degradation and the country's economic growth. Likewise, the relationship between environmental degradation and foreign direct investments confirms an invalid PHH in India. The non-existence of the two hypotheses has important implications on formulation, evaluation, and restructuring of the country's environmental, industrial and economic regulations. The study also considers industrialisation, population density and urbanisation as other regressors. Additionally, the causal relationships among the variables are explored in the study.