The relationship between energy consumption and growth in emerging markets by panel quantile regression: Evidence from VISTA countries

Abstract

Energy consumption and economic growth relationship is an important topic for global economy. Most of researchers investigated this relationship with different methods on different macro-economic data. These methods are including not only time-series econometrics but also panel data analysis. Moreover, they analyzed different countries or country groups classified by OECD, World Bank or any other economic organizations. The aim of study is the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth with panel quantile regression method on VISTA countries (Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey and Argentina). Estimations are made annually for 1985 – 2013 period. Dependent variable is GDP per capita growth and independent variables are logarithmic energy consumption indicators which are Oil Consumption, Coal Consumption, Hydroelectricity Consumption and Primary Energy Consumption. Results show that the effects of logarithmic energy consumption variables are changing on economic growth for different quantiles (? = 0.25; 0.50; 0.75; 0.90). In conclusion, effect of oil consumption on economic growth is falling at high quantiles of GDP growth. In contrast, effect of hydroelectricity consumption and primary energy consumption on economic growth is rising at high quantiles. But, there is not a statistical significant effect of coal consumption on economic growth at any quantile.