Revisiting Energy Consumption-economic Growth Hypothesis: Do Slope Heterogeneity and Cross-sectional Dependence Matter?

In this paper, the long-term nexus between energy consumption and economic growth is investigated using a panel data of 80 countries from World Bank data base for the period 1970 to 2017. In order to check for the issues of endogeneity, slope heterogeneity, and cross-sectional dependence present in errors of panel data, the study applied cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) and cross-sectional augmented distributed lag (CS-DL) models to examine the long-term impact of energy consumption on economic growth. The empirical results revealed that energy consumption has a positive and significant long-run effect on economic growth and that cross-sectional dependence, slope endogeneity and heterogeneity are issues that should be on the watch when dealing with panel data of developing and developed countries’ analysis. Furthermore, the outcomes indicated that the impact of energy consumption on economic growth is stronger in less developed countries than in advanced economies. Technological progressions that give rise to the advancement of clean and efficient energy and substitution of low-quality fuels with high quality fuels are some of the possible channels that weaken the link between energy consumption and economic growth in advanced economies. Importantly, from a policy perspective, based on the study findings, energy conservation policies aimed at promoting environmental quality may worsen economic growth in developing countries, thereby adversely affecting their long-run economic growths