Maritime Transportation, Environmental Pollution, and Economic Growth in Iran: Using Dynamic Log Linear Model and Granger Causality Approach

The main purpose of this study is to estimate the maritime transportation elasticities of the environmental pollution and economic growth in Iran within the short-run and long-run to find out the relationships among maritime transportation, environmental pollution and economic growth. The lagged endogenous model (a dynamic log-linear model that we used) is estimated using two distinctive approaches: single-equation one with OLS and simultaneous-equations with GMM. The results of both methods unanimously show that the maritime transportation elasticities of both environmental pollution and economic growth are low and positive just like the economic growth elasticities of environmental pollution. Therefore, environmental pollution has a positive relationship with the maritime transportation and economic growth, confirming the Pollution Haven Hypothesis; and the economic growth responds to the maritime transportation slightly and slowly. The policy-makers are advised to improve the environmentally-polluting infrastructure of the maritime transportation rather than restricting the growth of this sector.