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Electricity Use as an Indicator of U.S. Economic Activity

Author

Listed:
  • Arora, Vipin
  • Lieskovsky, Jozef

Abstract

We argue for the resurrection of an old idea: electricity use as an indicator of U.S. economic activity. Our analysis relies on associations–the 40-year correlation between growth rates in real GDP and electricity use can be as high as 89% –and intuition. Electricity use and economic conditions should move together. The vast majority of goods and services are still produced using electricity; services may require less electricity, but they still require some. Electricity use also has other strengths –it is broad-based and the data are available weekly, possibly hourly by 2015.

Suggested Citation

  • Arora, Vipin & Lieskovsky, Jozef, 2016. "Electricity Use as an Indicator of U.S. Economic Activity," EconStor Research Reports 126147, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:esrepo:126147
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Kajal Lahiri & Wenxiong Yao, 2012. "Should transportation output be included as part of the coincident indicators system?," OECD Journal: Journal of Business Cycle Measurement and Analysis, OECD Publishing, Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys, vol. 2012(1), pages 1-24.
    2. Peng, Jyh-Ying & Aston, John A. D., 2011. "The State Space Models Toolbox for MATLAB," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 41(i06).
    3. Harvey,Andrew C., 1991. "Forecasting, Structural Time Series Models and the Kalman Filter," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521405737.
    4. Francisco J. Buera & Joseph P. Kaboski, 2012. "The Rise of the Service Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2540-2569, October.
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    Cited by:

    1. Jinning Wang & Fangxing Li & Hantao Cui & Qingxin Shi & Trey Mingee, 2022. "Electricity consumption variation versus economic structure during COVID-19 on metropolitan statistical areas in the US," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    electricity; economic indicator; business cycles;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy

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