Date of Award
Spring 2020
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science (BS)
Advisor(s)
Sris Chatterjee
Second Advisor
Luke Kachersky
Abstract
For my thesis I will be examining the correlation between a country’s economic and environmental performance and seeing how this relationship varies across the world. One of the main factors that plays into a country’s environmental performance is the level of corporate social responsibility within that country. From the research I have already conducted, it seems that both culture and economic development play a role in how countries define their CSR policies. For example, some researchers have noted that firms in countries with a high level of economic development are much more likely to engage in corporate social responsibility than firms in underdeveloped countries. However, there are many more factors that play into a country’s economic performance other than corporate social responsibility, so just because CSR is more commonplace in these countries does not necessarily indicate that its economic performance as a whole will be higher. There are a plethora of other factors that can affect this relationship and I will have to keep these in mind when attempting to find an answer to my research question. In order to conduct my research, I will utilize Yale’s Environmental Performance Index which quantifies environmental performance ‘scores’ for over two hundred countries and then use regression analysis to plot these scores against the country’s economic performance. It is important to note that the term “economic performance” in my thesis refers to a set of variables which will include GDP, unemployment rate, inflation, and Gini coefficient. Beyond these variables, I will also be examining the relationship between environmental performance and two governmental measures: corruption (as measured by the Corruption Perceptions Index) as well as ease of doing business (Ease of Doing Business Index) as previous studies have observed the correlations between these two variables and economic growth in the past.
Recommended Citation
Burns, William, "A Cross-Country Analysis of the Correlation between Environmental and Economic Performance" (2020). Gabelli School of Business Honors Thesis Collection. 83.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/gabelli_thesis/83
