Land take, land use and environmental issues. Is the Kuznets curve valid? The case of Italy

Land take represents a relevant issue in all economies, with important consequences on the quality of the environment. In this paper we investigate the relationship between land consumption and economic development following the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. We first propose a theoretical model linking land consumption with income levels and then study the Italian case. We analyse data from the provinces between 2015 and 2021 by means of spatial panel econometric techniques and using panel estimators with spatial and a-spatial instrumental variables. Our results, robust to the different estimation techniques and to the inclusion of control variables, show that Italy is in the decreasing phase of the EKC.