Energy demand and economic growth: The African experience

The paper investigates the long run relationship between energy use per capita and per capita real gross domestic product (GDP) for 19 African countries for the period 1971-2001 using a newly developed cointegration test proposed by [Pesaran, M. H., Shin, Y, & Smith, R. (2001). Bounds testing approach to the analysis of level relationships. Jounal of Applied Econometrics, 16, 289-325], which is capable of testing for the existence of a long run relationship regardless of whether the underlying time series are individually I(0), I(1) or mutually cointegrated. The paper also uses the [Toda, H. Y., & Yamamoto, T. (1995). Statistical inference in vector autoregressions with possibly integrated process. Jounal of Econometrics, 66, 225-250] version of the Granger causality test which is valid regardless of whether a series is I(0), I(1) or I(2), non-cointegrated or cointegrated of any arbitrary order. The empirical evidence shows that there was a long run relationship between the two series for only eight countries and causality for only 10 countries.