رابطه مصرف انرژی و رشد اقتصادی در تانزانیا: ARDL رویکرد تستی مرزها

In this paper, we examine the intertemporal causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in Tanzania during the period of 1971–2006. Unlike the majority of the previous studies, we employ the newly developed autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)-bounds testing approach by Pesaran et al. [2001. Bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships. Journal of Applied Econometrics 16, 289–326] to examine this linkage. We also use two proxies of energy consumption, namely total energy consumption per capita and electricity consumption per capita. The results of the bounds test show that there is a stable long-run relationship between each of the proxies of energy consumption and economic growth. The results of the causality test, on the other hand, show that there is a unidirectional causal flow from total energy consumption to economic growth and a prima-facie causal flow from electricity consumption to economic growth. Overall, the study finds that energy consumption spurs economic growth in Tanzania.

Since 1970s, a number of studies have attempted to examine the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in both developed and developing countries. Unfortunately, the majority of the studies in developing countries have concentrated mainly in Asia and Latin America, affording sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries very little coverage and in some instances none at all. In fact, empirical studies on countries like Tanzania are almost non-existent. Even where such studies have been undertaken, the empirical findings on the direction of causality between energy consumption and economic growth have been largely inconclusive. Over all, the empirical evidence from previous studies on this subject shows that the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth differs from country to country and over time. In addition, previous studies have shown that the causality between the two variables may be sensitive to the choice of the energy consumption variable. Although the majority of the previous studies have found a direct causal relationship between the various proxies of energy consumption and economic growth, the literature regarding the possible neutrality between energy consumption and economic growth is growing in quantity and substance. The majority of the previous studies on the causality between energy consumption and economic growth have mainly used the residual-based cointegration test associated with Engle and Granger (1987) and the maximum likelihood test based on Johansen (1988) and Johansen and Juselius (1990). Yet it is now well known that these cointegration techniques may not be appropriate when the sample size is too small (see Narayan and Smyth, 2005). In addition, some previous studies have over-relied on the cross-sectional data analysis, which generalises the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth across countries. The problem of using a cross-sectional method is that by grouping together countries that are at different stages of economic development, it fails to address the country-specific effects of energy consumption on economic growth and vice versa. In particular, the method fails to explicitly address the potential biases induced by the existence of cross-country heterogeneity, which may lead to inconsistent and misleading estimates (see also Odhiambo, 2008; Ghirmay, 2004; Quah, 1993; Casselli et al., 1996). It is against this backdrop that the current study attempts to investigate the intertemporal causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in Tanzania using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)-bounds testing approach. The study uses two proxies of energy consumption, namely the total energy consumption per capita and the electricity consumption per capita against the real GDP per capita—a proxy for economic growth. The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 gives an overview of the energy policies in Tanzania. Section 3 presents the literature review, while Section 4 deals with the empirical model specification, the estimation technique and the empirical analysis of the regression results. Section 5 concludes the study.

This study examines the intertemporal causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in Tanzania—using two proxies of energy consumption, namely total energy consumption and electricity consumption against per capita real GDP—a proxy for economic growth. The study attempts to answer one fundamental question. Does energy consumption in Tanzania spur economic growth? Although a number of studies have been conducted on the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in a number of developing countries, the majority of these studies have concentrated mainly on Asia and Latin America, affording sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries very little coverage and in some instances none at all. In addition, previous studies on this subject suffer from two major weaknesses. Firstly, the majority of the previous studies have mainly used the residual-based cointegration test associated with Engle and Granger (1987) and the maximum likelihood test based on Johansen (1988) and Johansen and Juselius (1990) to examine the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth. Yet it is now well known that these cointegration techniques may not be appropriate when the sample size is too small (see Narayan and Smyth, 2005). Secondly, some previous studies have over-relied on the cross-sectional data analysis, which fails to address the country-specific effects of energy consumption on economic growth and vice versa. Using the ARDL-bounds test procedure, the empirical results of this study show that there is a distinct unidirectional causal flow from total energy consumption to economic growth, both in the short run and in the long run. The results also show that there is a prima facie (short-run) causal flow from electricity consumption to economic growth. Overall, the study finds that energy consumption spurs economic growth in Tanzania.