مصرف برق و رشد اقتصادی در آفریقای جنوبی: آزمایش علیت سه متغیره

In this paper we examine the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in South Africa. We incorporate the employment rate as an intermittent variable in the bivariate model between electricity consumption and economic growth—thereby creating a simple trivariate causality framework. Our empirical results show that there is a distinct bidirectional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in South Africa. In addition, the results show that employment in South Africa Granger-causes economic growth. The results apply irrespective of whether the causality is estimated in the short-run or in the long-run formulation. The study, therefore, recommends that policies geared towards the expansion of the electricity infrastructure should be intensified in South Africa in order to cope with the increasing demand exerted by the country's strong economic growth and rapid industrialisation programme. This will certainly enable the country to avoid unprecedented power outages similar to those experienced in the country in mid-January 2008.

The debate regarding the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth has attracted increasing attention in recent years. The thrust of this debate has been whether electricity consumption Granger-causes economic growth or whether it is economic growth that Granger-causes electricity consumption. From a policy standpoint, the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth has important implications (see Asafu-Adjaye, 2000 and Ghosh, 2002; Paul et al., 2004, Narayan and Smyth, 2005 and Narayan and Singh, 2007). A finding in favour of a positive unidirectional causality running from GDP to electricity consumption may imply that a country is not entirely dependent on electricity for its economic growth, and that energy conservation policies may be implemented with little or no adverse effects on economic growth. However, a unidirectional causality running from electricity consumption to economic growth implies that economic growth is dependent on electricity consumption and that a decrease in electricity consumption will inevitably lead to a decrease in real income, which may have a negative effect on employment and job creation (see also Narayan and Singh, 2007:1142). The latter outcome may have far-reaching implications for a country like South Africa, which is currently targeting a sustained GDP growth rate of 6% by the year 2010. The finding of no causality in either direction, i.e. the so-called ‘neutrality hypothesis’, on the other hand, implies that energy conservation policies do not have a significant effect on economic growth (see Asafu-Adjaye, 2000 and Paul et al., 2004). Although the debate regarding the causal relationship between energy and economic growth has generated much literature in both developed and developing countries, the majority of the previous studies concentrated mainly on Asia and Latin America, affording sub-Saharan African countries either very little or no coverage at all. Even where such studies have been undertaken, the empirical findings on the direction of causality between electricity consumption and economic growth have been largely inconclusive. Previous studies on this subject, however, suffer from two major limitations. Firstly, some of the studies have over-relied on the cross-sectional data which cannot satisfactorily address the country-specific issues. Secondly, some studies have used a bivariate framework, and may, therefore, suffer from the omission of variables bias. In other words, the introduction of a third variable affecting both electricity consumption and economic growth in the bivariate framework may not only alter the direction of causality between the two variables, but also the magnitude of the estimate. It is against this backdrop that the current study attempts to examine the intertemporal causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in South Africa by incorporating the rate of unemployment as an intermittent variable in a bivariate framework—thereby creating a simple trivariate causality model. The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 discusses the trends of electricity consumption and economic growth in South Africa. Section 3 presents the literature review, while Section 4 deals with the empirical model specification, estimation technique and the empirical analysis of the regression results. Section 5 concludes the study.

This study examines the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth using the South African data. The study attempts to answer one critical question. Is there a causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in South Africa? Previous studies on this subject suffer from two major limitations. Firstly, the majority of the studies has mainly used a bivariate causality model, and may, therefore, suffer from the omission-of-variables bias. Secondly, some of the studies have over-relied on the cross-sectional data, which may satisfactorily address the country-specific issues. Unlike the majority of the previous studies, the current study incorporates the employment rate as an intermittent variable in the bivariate model—thereby creating a simple trivariate causality framework. Using the cointegration-based error–correction mechanism, the empirical results of this study show that there is a bidirectional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in South Africa. In addition, the study finds that there is a distinct unidirectional causality from employment to economic growth. The results apply irrespective of whether the causality is estimated in the short-run or in the long-run dynamics. The study, therefore, recommends that policies geared towards the expansion of the electricity infrastructure should be intensified in South Africa in order to cope with the increasing demand exerted by the country's strong economic growth and rapid industrialisation programme. This will certainly enable the country to avoid unprecedented power outages similar to those experienced in the country in mid-January 2008.