Electricity Consumption and Economic Growth in BRI Countries: Panel Causality and Policy Implications

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to estimate the relationships between electricity consumption and economic growth in 45 BRI countries during 1990–2015. The empirical results indicate that there are unidirectional short-run and long-run causality relationships running from economic growth to electricity consumption in all-countries and low and medium-income countries. A unidirectional long-run causality running from economic growth to electricity consumption is observed for high-income countries and the bi-directional short-run causality is found in OPEC countries. In the future, green power cooperation with consideration of host country conditions and environmental constraints should be promoted in BRI countries.

KEY WORDS:

• BRI
• causality test
• economic growth
• electricity consumption
• panel data

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the funding of National Natural Science Foundation of China (71673085), Beijing Social Science Fund (16YJB027), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2018ZD14) and the 111 Project (B18021). The authors would also like to acknowledge great thanks to anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, which largely improve the academic quality of this article. The usual caveats apply.

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Beijing Social Science Fund [16YJB027]; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [2018ZD14];National Natural Science Foundation of China [71673085];111 Project [B18021].