Hierarchical structure of the countries based on electricity consumption and economic growth

•We examined the hierarchical structures of EC of countries.•The relationships between EC and GDP in countries are studied.•We constructed networks by using hierarchical structure methods.•We carried out bootstrap technique to determine the reliability of the links.•A strong relation between energy consumption and economic growth is found.

We investigate the hierarchical structures of countries based on electricity consumption and economic growth by using the real amounts of their consumption over a certain time period. We use electricity consumption data to detect the topological properties of 64 countries from 1971 to 2008. These countries are divided into three clusters: low income group, middle income group and high income group countries. Firstly, a relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth is investigated by using the concept of hierarchical structure methods (minimal spanning tree (MST) and hierarchical tree (HT)). Secondly, we perform bootstrap techniques to investigate a value of the statistical reliability to the links of the MST. Finally, we use a clustering linkage procedure in order to observe the cluster structure more clearly. The results of the structural topologies of these trees are as follows: (i) we identified different clusters of countries according to their geographical location and economic growth, (ii) we found a strong relation between energy consumption and economic growth for all the income groups considered in this study and (iii) the results are in good agreement with the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth.