Application of spatial panel autoregressive models to sustainable development

The aim of this paper is the presentation of a spatial panel models appli- cation to analyzing the level of sustainable development realization in 32. European Countries. This type of spatial models has not been used in Poland in this field of re- search. Models construction was based on Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis. It assumes the existence of a relationship between various indicators of environmental degradation and income per capita. In the early stages of economic growth pollution increases. However, above a certain level of high income per capita high-income levels economic growth leads to environmental improvement. This implies that the environ- mental impact indicator is an inverted U-shaped function of income per capita. Selected statistics tools to present the phenomena were also used The data include the years from 1990 to 2006. According to the existence of spatial autocorrelation and results obtained from both parts of the research, assessment and comparison analysis of sustainable development level in Europe were conducted.