An empirical study on the interactions of economic growth and environmental pollution in Yantai——based on the unrestricted VAR method

Based on the unrestricted VAR method,the dynamic interactions between economic growth and environmental pollution was investigated through the variable stationary characterization and cointegration test,granger causality test,impulse response functions and variance decomposition analysis according to the time series data of three kinds of pollution indices in Yantai city from 1986 to 2003. The results were as follows:①The GDP per capita granger caused pollution emissions,while it was not true in versa. This was consistent with the fact that Yantai was at a middle industrialization stage during the study period. ②The "Inverted U" curve reflecting the economy-environment relationship between indices of environmental quality and levels of GDP per capita was not a general rule, and the differences of selected pollution indices could present different forms in the economy-environment system. ③The impact of economic growth on environmental quality was short-time and non-asymptotic,whereas the one of the environmental disciplinarian quality on economic growth was long-time and asymptotic. ④The analysis of variance decomposition indicated that the economic growth was the main variable to explain the forecasting mean square error of the environmental quality indices and it was not true in versa. Finally,it was necessary to strengthen the government’s supervision on environment, establish an effective property right-protection market-bargaining system, and pay more attention to environment protection and economic sustainable development.