Quality of Institutions and Environmental Quality in the International Scientific Literature

This paper aims to provide a reasoned review of the most recent international scientific literature on the relationship between the quality of institutions and the quality of the environment. In this respect, the literature analysed does not agree either as regards the choice of institutional quality indicators, or as regards the environmental indicators, or as regards the nature of the relationship between the two aspects. The paper, trying to bring order to the large number of studies published on the subject, is structured in nine paragraphs: the introduction; the second one which clarifies what we mean by “institutional quality” and the indicators we use to study it; the third, fourth, and fifth focus on the role played by specific quality indicators, such as democracy, corruption and the rule of law, in determining the quality of the environment in different countries or regions of the world. The sixth paragraph looks at the so-called “environmental Kutznet curve”, describing the relationship between the economic growth of a country and its environmental degradation. The seventh focuses on the role of another important economic variable, foreign investments, and the eight shows the relationship between institutional quality and energy choices. In the ninth we try to formulate some conclusions.