NATIONAL ENERGY EFFICIENCY

This paper employs cross country regression analysis to try to pinpoint a few factors that may be of relevance for national energy efficiency so that more effective national energy efficiency policy can be undertaken, and, to test to see whether or not the presupposition commonly held by many policy makers, that improvements in national energy efficiency lead to reductions in the intensity of country energy use, can be empirically verified. With regard to the determinants of national energy efficiency, the paper exams three variables. They are the share of agriculture to GDP, the ratio of energy usage to energy production, and the size of the government relative to the economy. The findings of the paper suggest, first, that each of these three variables seem to be important for national economic efficiency, and, second, that raising national energy efficiency does indeed appear to lower the intensity of national energy usage