IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/een/camaaa/2016-45.html

Understanding the Energy-GDP Elasticity: A Sectoral Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Paul J. Burke
  • Zsuzsanna Csereklyei

Abstract

This paper uses per capita data for 132 countries over 1960-2010 to estimate elasticities of sectoral energy use with respect to national gross domestic product (GDP). We estimate models in both levels and growth rates and use our estimates to sectorally decompose the aggregate energy-GDP elasticity. Our estimates show that residential energy use is very inelastic to GDP if primary solid biofuels are counted in energy use tallies, especially at low income levels. Residential use of electricity is more tightly linked to GDP, as is energy use by the transportation, industrial, and services sectors. Agriculture typically accounts for a small share of energy use and has a modest energy-GDP elasticity. The aggregate energy-GDP elasticity tends to be higher for countries at higher income levels, in large part because traditional use of primary solid biofuels is less important. Gasoline prices, winter temperature, population, and land area are among other factors influencing sectoral energy use.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul J. Burke & Zsuzsanna Csereklyei, 2016. "Understanding the Energy-GDP Elasticity: A Sectoral Approach," CAMA Working Papers 2016-45, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    • Handle: RePEc:een:camaaa:2016-45
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/2025-03/45_2016_burke_csereklyei_word.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:een:camaaa:2016-45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Cama Admin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/asanuau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.