This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of environmental standards by studying the role of income inequality and freedom of the press. Given that evidence of the environmental Kuznets curve has only been found for some countries, it is thus crucial to investigate whether other factors besides income per capita levels may be affecting countries' decisions to pass environmentally-friendly legislation. We investigate the effects that inequality and freedom of the press have on environmental stringency for a sample of OECD and BRIICS countries and a global sample of 82 countries using data over the period 1994–2015. We hypothesize that the more unequal a society is, and the greater the oppression of the press is, the less stringent environmental policies are. The results partially confirm our hypothesis. In particular, lack of press freedom is negatively correlated with environmental stringency, whereas inequality shows a non-linear effect only for non-high-income countries.

中文翻译：

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新闻自由、不平等和环境政策

本文通过研究收入不平等和新闻自由的作用，为有关环境标准决定因素的文献做出了贡献。鉴于仅在某些国家发现了环境库兹涅茨曲线的证据，因此调查人均收入水平以外的其他因素是否可能影响各国通过环境友好型立法的决定至关重要。我们使用 1994 年至 2015 年期间的数据，对 OECD 和 BRIICS 国家的样本以及 82 个国家的全球样本，调查不平等和新闻自由对环境严格性的影响。我们假设一个社会越不平等，媒体的压迫越大，环境政策就越不严格。结果部分证实了我们的假设。特别是，