توسعه مالی و مصرف انرژی در اقتصادهای در مرکز و شرق مرز اروپا

This study examines the impact of financial development on energy consumption in a sample of 9 Central and Eastern European frontier economies. Several different measures of financial development are examined including bank related variables and stock market variables. The empirical results, obtained from dynamic panel demand models, show a positive and statistically significant relationship between financial development and energy consumption when financial development is measured using banking variables like deposit money bank assets to GDP, financial system deposits to GDP, or liquid liabilities to GDP. Of the three stock market variables investigated, only one, stock market turnover, has a positive and statistically significant impact on energy consumption. Both short-run and long-run elasticities are presented. The implications of these results for energy policy are discussed.

While there is a fairly large literature investigating the link between economic growth and financial development (see, for example, Levine, 1997 and Fung, 2009), the impact that financial development has on the demand for energy is a topic that has, however, received very little attention. Financial development, which broadly defined, refers to a country's decision to allow and promote financial activities like increased foreign direct investment (FDI), increases in banking activity, and increases in stock market activity. Financial development is important because it can increase the economic efficiency of a country's financial system and this can affect economic activity and the demand for energy. If financial development is found to affect the demand for energy then this relationship can affect energy policy and carbon emissions strategies.

To date, very little has been published on the relationship between financial development and energy demand. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact that financial development has on the demand for energy in frontier economies. This is a topic that is likely to grow in importance as frontier economies continue to develop. This paper uses recently developed dynamic panel modeling techniques to model and estimate the relationship between financial development and energy demand in a sample of 9 Central and Eastern European frontier economies. The resulting empirical models fit the data well and pass a number of diagnostic tests. The results from this paper show that increases in financial development, measured using deposit money bank assets to GDP, financial system deposits to GDP, liquid liabilities to GDP, or stock market turnover to GDP, increases the demand for energy in Central and Eastern European frontier economies. This paper offers the first set of results on how financial development affects energy demand in frontier economies. These results are important for several reasons.