A reassessment of energy and GDP relationship: A case of Australia

This paper investigates the long-run and short-run relationships between energy consumption and economic growth in Australia using the bound testing and the ARDL approach. For the first time in the literature we employ both production and demand side models and a unified model comprising both production and demand side variables for a single set of data. The relationships are investigated at aggregate as well as several disaggregated energy categories, such as coal, oil, gas and electricity. The possibilities of one or more structural break(s) in the data series are examined by applying the recent advances in techniques. We find that the results of the cointegration tests could be affected by the structural break(s) in the data. It is, therefore, crucial to incorporate the information on structural break(s) in the subsequent modelling and inferences. Moreover, neither the production side nor the demand side framework alone can provide sufficient information to draw an ultimate conclusion on the cointegration and causal direction between energy and output. When alternative frameworks and structural break(s) in time-series are explored properly, strong evidence of a bidirectional relationship between energy and output can be observed. The finding is true both at aggregate and disaggregate levels of energy consumption.