Causal complexity of economic development by energy consumption

This study intends to explore the associations between the energy consumption relevant antecedents and economic development by using fuzzy set/Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). FsQCA yields the causal recipes (causal combinations) for the outcome, GDP. The energy relevant data are from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and economic relevant data are from the International Monetary Fund. The analysis results provide two groups of causal recipes: One group explains the conditions for knowledge-intensive industrialized economies and the other explains those conditions for traditional industrialized economies. Both groups lead to high GDP. The results illustrate that only one equation may be insufficient to describe the associations between the energy consumption relevant antecedents and the economic development. This study also applies multivariate regression analysis (MRA) for similar analysis. The results report that not every variable of each individual year is significant, thus reflecting the problem of MRA.