Energy Demand and Temperature: A Dynamic Panel Analysis

This paper is a first attempt to investigate the effect of climate on the demand for different energy vectors from different final users. The ultimate motivation for this is to arrive to a consistent evaluation of the impact of climate change on key consumption goods and primary factors such as energy vectors. This paper addresses these issues by means of a dynamic panel analysis of the demand for coal, gas, electricity, oil and oil products by residential, commercial and industrial users in OECD and (a few) non-OECD countries. It turns out that temperature has a very different influence on the demand of energy vectors as consumption goods and on their demand as primary factors. In general, residential demand responds negatively to temperature increases, while industrial demand is insensitive to temperature increases. As to the service sector, only electricity demand displays a mildly significant negative elasticity to temperature changes

Energy Consumption and Economic Growth - New Insights into the Cointegration Relationship

This paper examines the long-run relationship between energy consumption and real GDP, including energy prices, for 25 OECD countries from 1981 to 2007. The distinction between common factors and idiosyncratic components using principal component analysis allows to distinguish between developments on an international and a national level as drivers of the long-run relationship. Indeed, cointegration between the common components of the underlying variables indicates that international developments dominate the long-run relationship between energy consumption and real GDP. Furthermore, the results suggest that energy consumption is price-inelastic. Causality tests indicate the presence of a bi-directional causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth.Dieses Papier untersucht unter Einbeziehung von Energiepreisen die langfristige Beziehung zwischen Energieverbrauch und realen BIP für 25 OECD Länder von 1981 bis 2007. Durch die Unterscheidung von gemeinsamen und idiosynkratischen Komponenten mit Hilfe einer Faktoranalyse kann zwischen Entwicklungen auf internationaler und nationaler Ebene als Treiber der Langfristbeziehung differenziert werden. In der Tat deutet Kointegration zwischen den gemeinsamen Faktoren der zugrundeliegenden Variablen darauf hin, dass internationale Entwicklungen die langfristige Beziehung zwischen Energieverbrauch und realem BIP dominieren. Des Weiteren suggerieren die ökonometrischen Ergebnisse, dass der Energieverbrauch relativ preisunelastisch ist. Kausalitätstests ergeben eine bidirektionale kausale Beziehung zwischen Energieverbrauch und Wirtschaftswachstum

Energy-GDP relationship for oil-exporting countries: Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia

The purpose of this paper is to examine the causality issue between energy consumption and economic growth for three typical oil-exporting countries: Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. We use two different test methods to test for causality, namely, the error correction model and Toda-Yamamoto (1995) procedure. The results based on both approaches consistently show a unidirectional long-run causality from economic growth to energy consumption for Iran and Kuwait and unidirectional strong causality from energy consumption to economic growth for Saudi Arabia. So, the results support the neutrality hypothesis of energy consumption with respect to economic growth for Iran and Kuwait and vice versa for Saudi Arabia. The findings have practical policy implications for decision makers in the area of macroeconomic planning, as energy conservation is a feasible policy with no damaging repercussions on economic growth for Iran and Kuwait. However, increased GDP requires enormous energy consumption in Saudi Arabia. So, it seems misleading to recommend the same policy for different oil-exporting countries. Copyright 2007 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.