Development and Corporate Sustainability in OECD Economies: An Indicator-Specific Analysis of Growth, Innovation, and Inequality

Economic growth and environmental sustainability are often portrayed as two competing goals, mainly within the context of environmental economics where physical resource limits are argued to be fundamentally in conflict with continued economic expansion. Yet despite this paradox, the extent to which higher levels of economic development are associated with better or worse corporate sustainability performance remains insufficiently explored across diverse country samples. This thesis, therefore, addresses that gap by investigating whether a country's level of economic development is associated with the sustainability performance of its corporate sector. To answer this question, from a panel of 38 OECD countries observed between 2000 and 2023, this study tests five hypotheses that pair development indicators, GDP growth, GERD, TFP, HDI, and the Gini coefficient, with sustainability indicators, GHG emissions, domestic material consumption, average annual wages, and the gender wage gap. These relationships are examined through descriptive statistics, Pearson and Spearman correlation, and OLS regression analysis. Within the univariate analysis, each indicator is first studied for its longitudinal trend across the full OECD sample, then broken down for cross-country comparison to identify the best and worst performers and finally assessed for regional variance across eight identified regions. The bivariate analysis follows correlation testing and OLS regression, which also grounds the scatter plots used to visualize each hypothesis. The findings reveal considerable divergence across hypotheses and methods within the sample. Starting with GDP growth and GHG emissions, rank based and OLS regression analysis both reveal a negative relationship once the United States is identified and removed as an outlier. GERD and GHG emissions, by contrast, show a positive correlation, while TFP and material consumption exhibit no significant correlation under any method. HDI's relationship with the gender wage gap similarly shows no linear association, though a weak significant link emerges once rank based Spearman correlation is applied, and finally, the Gini coefficient consistently predicts lower wages across all methods, as set out in the study's final hypothesis. Overall, results suggest that the relationship between development and sustainability remains highly indicator-specific, and that both concepts are layered and multidimensional in ways that no single economic theory or growth model can fully define or predict.