MULTIVARIATE GRANGER CAUSALITY BETWEEN ELECTRICITY

CONSUMPTION, ECONOMIC GROWTH, FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT,

POPULATION, AND FOREIGN TRADE IN PORTUGAL

Chor Foon TANG*

Department of Economics,
Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya

and

Muhammad SHAHBAZ
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Lahore, Pakistan

*Corresponding author: Chor Foon TANG, Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and
Administration, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Email: tcfoon@yahoo.com

MULTIVARIATE GRANGER CAUSALITY BETWEEN ELECTRICITY

CONSUMPTION, ECONOMIC GROWTH, FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT,
POPULATION, AND FOREIGN TRADE IN PORTUGAL

ABSTRACT
The present paper attempts to re-assess the nexus between electricity
consumption, economic growth, financial development, population and
foreign trade in Portugal with the cointegration test proposed by Pesaran et al.
(2001). The Granger causality test was implemented to ascertain the direction
of causality between the variables. This study used the annual sample from
1970 to 2009. Our empirical results show that the variables are cointegrated in
Portugal. Moreover, the overall Granger causality results exhibit that
electricity consumption, economic growth, and population are Granger-causes
each other while financial development Granger-cause electricity consumption
in Portugal. With these findings, we affirm that energy is an important source
for Portugal; hence energy conservation policy may deteriorate economic
growth in Portugal.
Keywords: Causality; electricity consumption; economic growth; financial development;
Portugal
JEL classification: C32; O53; Q20; Q43

1.

BACKGROUND

The energy-growth nexus is of great interest to economists as well as policymakers

because of its significant policy implications. Kraft and Kraft (1978) was the first empirical
work that dealing with the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic
growth. Their findings suggested strong uni-directional causality running from economic
growth to energy consumption in the United States. Motivated by this interesting findings,
voluminous of empirical studies were conducted to replicate the causal relationship between
energy consumption and economic growth at different countries and/or regions (e.g.
Abosedra et al., 2009; Apergis and Payne, 2010; Li et al., 2008). This is because the
interaction between energy consumption and economic growth is the key to successful
policies to stimulate economic growth. For example, if the causality finding supports the
growth hypothesis that is uni-directional causality running from energy consumption to
economic growth, restriction of energy consumption may adversely affect the economic
growth. On the other hand, if the causality finding supports the conservation hypothesis that
is uni-directional causality running from economic growth to energy consumption, policy
initiative aims to conserve energy may have less or no impact on economic growth.
To the best of our knowledge on literature review, the findings of the existing
empirical studies do not show strong consensus evidence of the causal relationship between
energy (electricity) consumption and economic growth for country-specific, multi-countries
as well as regional studies (Karanfil, 2009). Therefore, it is obstacle to provide a reasonable
policy recommendation for energy, environmental, and/or economic growth. Ozturk (2010)
and Payne (2010) performed a comprehensive literature survey on the energy-growth nexus
and also on the electricity-growth nexus, respectively. Both literatures survey consistently
exhibited that the major factors for the ambiguous causality evidences are: (a) omitted of

relevant variables, (b) methodological flaws, and (c) different time span of study. Karanfil
(2009) argued that those research papers just changing the time period of analysis is
insufficient contribution neither to the literatures nor policymakers to formulate effective
policy. The study indicates that there should be other potential variables that affecting energy
(electricity) consumption and its relationship with economic growth. For these reasons,
studies on this topic began to include other variables such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions
(Ang, 2007), exports (Lean and Smyth, 2010), labour or employment (Chang et al., 2001;
Shahbaz et al., 2011), population (Tang, 2009), financial development (Sadorsky, 2010),
energy prices (Chandran et al., 2010; Ciarreta and Zarraga, 2010; Masih and Masih, 1997),
and foreign direct investment (Masih and Masih, 1997; Tang, 2009) to examine the energygrowth nexus.
With respect to the case of Portugal, empirical study on the nexus between economic
growth and energy consumption is limited. As far as we know, only Murry and Nan (1994),
Narayan and Prasad (2008), Chontanawat et al. (2008), Ciarreta et al. (2009), and Shahbaz et
al. (2011) have investigated the energy-growth nexus in Portugal. Most studies for Portugal
on this topic are fall into the omitted variable(s) trap as they only examined the energygrowth nexus in a bi-variate framework (Ltkepohl, 1982). On top of that, those studies in bivariate setting also cannot find cointegration and long-run causality, implying that the bivariate framework is inappropriate. Murry and Nan (1994) supported the neutrality
hypothesis where energy consumption and economic growth does not Granger-cause each
other, whereas Narayan and Prasad (2008) and Chontanawat et al. (2008) exhibited that
energy consumption Granger-cause economic growth in Portugal. In contrast, Ciarreta et al.
(2009) found that economic growth Granger-cause electricity consumption in Portugal
instead of the other way around. Recently, Shahbaz et al. (2011) found two-way causality
between economic growth and electricity consumption in Portugal. In light of these

inconsistency causality evidences and the omission of relevant variables problems, it is very
important to conduct an empirical study to fill the lacuna by re-assessing the nexus between
economic growth and electricity consumption in Portugal via a multivariate model. Unlike
the earlier studies in Portugal, we take into account other potential variables such as financial
development, population and foreign trade to avoid the omitted variables bias. By doing so,
we have effectively married four catalysts of growth into one model energy-led growth,
finance-led growth, trade-led growth and population-led growth. Therefore, the results of this
study are more robust, reliable and policy-orientated. In terms of methodology, we follow
Ozturks (2010) recommendation to employ the bounds test to cointegration advocated by
Pesaran et al. (2001) to examine the presence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between
electricity consumption, economic growth, financial development, population and foreign
trade in Portugal. For the policymaking purposes, the Granger causality test will be employed
to verify the direction of causality between the variables of interest.
The rest of this study is organised as follows. Section 2 briefly discusses the
Portuguese economy, electricity consumption and economic growth. Section 3 presents the
literature review. Section 4 sets out the data and estimation procedures used in this study.
Section 5 discusses the empirical findings and Section 6 will reports the conclusion and
policy implications of this study.

2.

THE PORTUGUESE ECONOMY

Among the European Union (EU) members, Portugal is one of the steadily growing
European nations after joined the EU in 1986 and the European Monetary Union (EMU) in
1999. Over the past two decades, the Portuguese governments have privatised many statecontrolled agencies and the economic structure has been expended to services-based

economy such as energy, transportation, finance and telecommunication sectors (Shahbaz et

al., 2011). In order to facilitate the services-based economy, the transportation network and
infrastructure must be modernised and improved (Brown, 2002). Such economic
transformation has put enormous pressure on electricity consumption in Portugal. It is
therefore, the demand for electricity in Portugal has grown substantially from 1875.5 million
kilowatt hour (kWh) per capita in 1985 to approximately 4800 million kWh per capita in
2006. Apart from economic transformation, the significance increase of electricity
consumption is also attributed to residential electricity consumption (IEA, 2004). With
respect to this outperform electricity consumption records the Portuguese economy was the
top 50 electricity consumer in the world since 2007.

INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE

Figure 1 illustrates the growth rate of electricity consumption per capita and the
growth rate of real GDP per capita in Portugal from 1972 to 2009. From the visual inspection,
the two series are moving very closely (i.e. highly correlated) over the analysis period. In
addition, the growth rates of electricity consumption per capita are tend to fluctuate above the
growth rates of real GDP per capita in Portugal. Before the crisis in 1993, the average growth
rate of electricity consumption and economic growth are fluctuated around 6.2 per cent and
3.2 per cent, respectively. Between 2000 and 2009, the average growth rate of electricity
consumption per capita dropped to 3.2 per cent, while economic growth dropped to 0.5 per
cent. Moreover, the unemployment rate reached its peak at 8.4 per cent in 2007 which is the
highest unemployment rate in Portugal since 1987. The Portuguese economy slumps are
associated with the global financial crisis in 2008-2009 and the sovereign debt crisis in late2009.

Similar to many other developed countries, Portugals electricity supply has come
from variety of sources including fossil fuel, oil, coal, gas, biomass, hydropower, and wind
power. However, in 2011 the government launched the E4 programme Energy Efficiency
and Endogenous Energies to enhance the exploration and usage of renewable energy. The E4
programme focuses on electricity production through solar, hydro, wind and other
technologies on renewable energy (IEA, 2009). As a result of these initiatives, and to comply
with the EU directive on renewable electricity (2001/77/EC), the Portuguese government has
been able to substitute fossil fuel generated energy with renewable energy evidenced by 45
per cent electricity generation from renewable sources in 2010 compared to only 17 per cent
generation from renewable sources in 2005 (Rosenthal, 2010). Therefore, it is important to
study the energy-growth nexus for the Portuguese economy.

3.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Review of existing empirical literatures, there are two strands of studies on the
direction of causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth. The
first strand of empirical literature focused on multi-countries studies, while the second strand
of literature focused on single-country studies. Table 1 shows the finding of multi-countries
studies, while Table 2 summarise the findings of single-country studies. The general
conclusion from relevant literature reported in Table 1 and Table 2 is that that the causal
relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth has been mixed.

INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE

For the case of multi-countries studies, Yoo (2006) examined the direction of causality
between economic growth and electricity consumption for four ASEAN countries such as
Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. The study indicated that electricity
consumption and economic growth in Malaysia and Singapore are bi-directional causality.
Nevertheless, one-way causal relation was found from economic growth to electricity
consumption in Indonesia and Thailand. Similarly, Wolde-Rufael (2006) investigated the
relationship between electricity consumption and real GDP per capita (economic growth) for
17 African economies. Bounds testing approach to cointegration developed by Pesaran et al.
(2001) was applied to examine the presence of long-run equilibrium relationship and the
causality test suggested by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) was used to determine the direction of
causality between the variables of interest. The results show that cointegration is only found
in nine out of seventeen countries. However, causality analysis implies that electricity
consumption Granger-causes economic growth in Tunisia, Benin, Congo and the Democratic
Republic of Congo whereas economic growth Granger-causes electricity consumption in
Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Ghana, and Zimbabwe. Furthermore, there exists bi-directional
causality between the variables in case of Egypt, Gabon, and Morocco.1 Squalli (2007)
investigated the electricity consumption-growth hypothesis of 11 OPEC countries using the
bounds testing approach to cointegration and Granger causality test suggested by Toda and
Yamamoto (1995). The study found that the variables are moving together in the long-run in
selected OPEC countries. The causality analysis revealed bi-directional causality between
electricity consumption and economic growth in Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, while unidirectional causality running from economic growth to electricity consumption was observed
in Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait and Libya. Moreover, the author also found uni-directional causality

Unfortunately, there exists no causal relationship between both variables for the case of Algeria, Congo
Republic, Kenya, South Africa and Sudan over the period.

running from electricity consumption to economic growth in Nigeria, Indonesia, UAE, and
Venezuela.
Chen et al. (2007) re-investigated the relationship between electricity consumption
and economic growth in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Korea, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. Their results confirm cointegration between
electricity consumption and economic growth except in China and Malaysia. Panel Granger
causality test reported bi-directional causality between electricity consumption and economic
growth in the long run and economic growth seems to Granger-causes electricity
consumption in the short run.
Recently, Yoo and Kwak (2010) employed the cointegration and the Hsiaos (1981)
Granger causality techniques to analyse the association between economic growth and
electricity consumption in seven South American economies. Interestingly, they found that
most of the selected countries support uni-directional causality running from electricity
consumption to economic growth (i.e. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador).
While the rest of the two countries such as Venezuela supports conservation hypothesis and
Peru supports the feedback hypothesis.
Narayan and Prasad (2008) examined causality between electricity consumption and
economic growth over 38 OECD countries including Portugal. They used bootstrapping
causality test, but did not pay attention to examine the presence of long-run relationship
between the variables. Their findings showed that electricity consumption Granger-causes
economic growth in case of Australia, Iceland, Italy, the Slovak Republic, the Czech
Republic, Korea, Portugal, and the UK. The uni-directional causality was found running from
economic growth to electricity consumption in Finland, Hungry, Korea, Netherlands and
UK.2 Similarly, Bhm (2008) conducted a study to investigate the relationship between
2

There was no causal link between electricity consumption and economic growth in Belgium, Canada,
Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Mexico, and the USA.

electricity consumption and economic growth using the VECM framework.3 The results
showed one-way causality running from electricity consumption to economic growth in
Belgium, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands while the author also found evidence of unidirectional causality running from economic growth to electricity consumption in Ireland,
Portugal and Spain. Ultimately, electricity consumption and economic growth Granger cause
each other in case of Germany.4
Narayan and Smyth (2009) assessed the causal link between economic growth,
electricity consumption and exports in Middle Eastern Countries namely, Iran, Israel, Kuwait,
Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. The results of panel Granger causality reveal uni-directional
causality found running from electricity consumption to economic growth while economic
growth Granger-causes to exports only in short run. Besides that, Yoo and Kwak (2010)
performed causality test to investigate relationship between electricity consumption and
economic growth in seven South American countries i.e. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia,
Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. Empirical evidence indicated uni-directional causality running
from electricity consumption to economic growth in Argentina, Brazil, Columbia and
Ecuador while economic growth Granger-causes electricity consumption in the case of
Venezuela.5 Apart from that, Ciarreta and Zarraga (2010) performed panel cointegration and
causality tests to investigate the long-run and causal relationship between electricity
consumption and economic growth in 12 European countries.6 They found long-run
equilibrium relationship between electricity consumption, electricity prices and economic
growth. In addition, there is uni-directional causality running from electricity consumption to

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands,
Portugal, Spain and Sweden
4
There is no causality was found in Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Luxemburg and Sweden
5
There was no causal relation was between both variables in case of Peru.
6
Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Sweden, and two
non-EU countries: Norway and Switzerland.

economic growth and they also found some evidences of bi-directional causality between
energy prices and economic growth.7
Next, there are voluminous of studies on single-country, hence it is impossible for us
to comprehensively discuss all the empirical studies in the precise manner. Therefore, we
divided the studies based the four types of hypothesis suggested by Payne (2009) to make the
discussion concise and clear. The hypotheses are (a) Growth hypothesis, (b) Conservation
hypothesis, (c) Feedback hypothesis, and (d) Neutrality hypothesis.

INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE

As shown in Table 2, growth and feedback hypotheses are usually found by the
studies compared to the rests of the two hypotheses. To the best of our knowledge, no
country-specific study on electricity-growth nexus support neutrality hypothesis. There are
quite a numbers of studies support the growth hypothesis where there is uni-directional
Granger causality running from electricity consumption to economic growth. For example,
Aqeel and Butt (2001) for Pakistan, Altinay and Karagol (2005) for Turkey, Lee and Chang
(2007) for Taiwan, Shiu and Lam (2004) for China, Yoo (2005) for Korea, Narayan and Singh
(2007) for Fiji Islands, Yuan et al. (2007) for China, Abosedra et al. (2009) for Lebanon,
Chandran et al. (2010) for Malaysia, and Odhiambo (2009b) for Tanzania. On the other hand,
Ghosh (2002), Narayan and Smyth (2005), Yoo and Kim (2006), Ho amd Siu (2007),
Mozumder and Marathe (2007), Ciarreta et al. (2009), Ciarreta and Zarraga (2010) and
Shahbaz and Feridun (2011) found uni-directional causality running from economic growth

Acaravci and Ozturk (2010) examined the long-run relationship and causality between electricity consumption
and economic growth in Transition countries namely Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany,
Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Sweden, and two non-EU countries: Norway and Switzerland. Their results
found no cointegration between electricity consumption and real GDP. This could not lead them to pursuance in
investigating causality between both variables.

10

to electricity consumption in India, Australia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Portugal,

Spain and Pakistan,, respectively. Evidently, the findings of these studies support the
conservation hypothesis. Eventually, there are also studies that found bi-directional Granger
causality between electricity consumption and economic growth using the cointegration and
Granger causality tests. This is also known as the feedback hypothesis. From the summary of
literature survey of single-country reported in Table 1, Yang (2000) for Taiwan, Jumbe (2004)
for Malawi, Zachariadis and Pashouortidou (2007) for Cyprus, Tang (2008) for Malaysia,
Odhiambo (2009a) for the South Africa, Tang (2009) for Malaysia, Lean and Smyth (2010)
for Malaysia, Oudraogo (2010) for Burkina Faso, Lorde et al. (2010) for Barbados, Acaravci
(2010) for Turkey and Shahbaz et al. (2011) for Portugal are supporting the feedback
hypothesis.

4.

DATA AND ESTIMATION PROCEDURES

3.1

Data
This study uses the secondary annual data of electricity consumption (EC) per capita

(in million kWh), real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (2000 = 100), financial
development (FD) is measured by the ratio domestic credit to private sector to GDP, total
population (POP), and foreign trade (TR) is measured by the ratio of total trade (export plus
import) to GDP. This study covers the sample period from 1970 to 2009. All data are
collected from the World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI) database. Ultimately,
all series are transformed into natural logarithm form to obtain stationarity in the variancecovariance matrix (Chang et al., 2001; Fatai et al., 2004). Therefore, the first difference of
variables can be interpreted as growth rate.
3.2

Unit root and cointegration tests

11

Confirming the order of integration is a pre-requisite for almost all time series
analysis. In this study, we applied the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF), Phillips-Perron (PP)
and Kwaitkowski-Phillips-Schmidt-Shin (KPSS) unit root tests to determine the order of
integration for each series. Since the ADF test is low power in small sample (Cheung and Lai,
1995), we also applied the PP and KPSS unit root tests to check the robustness of the
estimation results.8
After determining the order of integration, we employ the bounds testing approach to
cointegration within the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) framework to investigate the
existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between the variables of interest (Pesaran et
al., 2001). The bounds testing approach has certain advantages over the conventional
cointegration techniques. Unlike the conventional cointegration techniques, the bounds
testing approach can be applied to the model irrespective of whether the variables are purely
I(0) or purely I(1). In addition to that, the Monte Carlo analysis exhibits that the ARDL
cointegration approach has superior properties in small sample (Pesaran and Shin, 1999). The
ARDL model for bounds testing approach to cointegration can be formulated as follows:

ln ECt a0 1 ln ECt 1 2 ln Yt 1 3 ln POPt 1 4 ln FDt 1 5 ln TRt 1 b1 j ln ECt j

j 1

b
j 0

2j

j 0

j 0

j 0

ln Yt j b3 j ln POPt j b4 j ln FDt j b5 j ln TRt j e1t

(1)

ln Yt a2 1 ln ECt 1 2 ln Yt 1 3 ln POPt 1 4 ln FDt 1 5 ln TRt 1 b1 j ln ECt j

j 0

b
j 1

2j

j 0

j 0

j 0

ln Yt j b3 j ln POPt j b4 j ln FDt j b5 j ln TRt j e2 t

(2)

Amano and van Norden (1992), Kwiatkowski et al. (1992) and Cheung and Chinn (1997) pointed out that a
joint-testing unit root procedure can substantially increase the robustness of the results.

12

ln POPt a3 1 ln ECt 1 2 ln Yt 1 3 ln POPt 1 4 ln FDt 1 5 ln TRt 1 b1 j ln ECt j

j 0

b
j 0

2j

j 1

j 0

j 0

ln Yt j b3 j ln POPt j b4 j ln FDt j b5 j ln TRt j e3t

(3)

ln FDt a4 1 ln ECt 1 2 ln Yt 1 3 ln POPt 1 4 ln FDt 1 5 ln TRt 1 b1 j ln ECt j

j 0

b
j 0

2j

j 0

j 1

j 0

ln Yt j b3 j ln POPt j b4 j ln FDt j b5 j ln TRt j e4 t

(4)

ln TRt a5 1 ln ECt 1 2 ln Yt 1 3 ln POPt 1 4 ln FDt 1 5 ln TRt 1 b1 j ln ECt j

j 0

b
j 0

2j

j 0

j 0

j 1

ln Yt j b3 j ln POPt j b4 j ln FDt j b5 j ln TRt j e5t

(5)

Here is the first difference operator, ln denotes the natural logarithm and k is the lag order
selected by Akaikes Information Criterion (AIC). ln ECt , ln GDPt , ln FDt , ln POPt , and
ln TRt are the electricity consumption per capita, real GDP per capita, total population,
financial development and foreign trade, respectively. The residuals eit are assumed to be
normally distributed and white noise. According to Pesaran et al. (2001), we can use the Ftest to determine the presence of a long-run relationship by restricting the coefficients of the
lagged level variables H 0 : 1 2 3 4 5 0 from equations (1) to (5). Pesaran et
al. (2001) computed two set of asymptotic critical values for ARDL cointegration test that is
lower bounds critical values I(0) and upper bounds critical values I(1). Strictly speaking, the
critical values tabulated in Pesaran et al. (2001) are not suitable for small sample study. In
order to circumvent this problem, Narayan (2005) provided a new set of critical values for

13

small sample.9 Given the sample size of our study is only 40 observations; we employ the
critical values suggested by Narayan (2005) instead of Pesaran et al. (2001).
If the calculated F-statistics exceeds the upper bound critical value, we conclude in
favour of a long-run relationship regardless of the order of integration. If the calculated Fstatistics falls below the lower critical values, we cannot reject the null hypothesis of no
cointegration. However, if the calculated F-statistic falls between the two critical bounds,
inference would be inconclusive.

3.3

Granger causality test

According to the concept of Granger causality, X causes Y if and only if the past

values of X help to predict the changes of Y . While, Y causes X if and only if the past
values of Y help to predict the changes of X . The vector autoregression (VAR) model is
likely to be used for this purpose. However, Granger (1988) noted that if a set of variables are
cointegrated, there must be short- and long-run causality which cannot be captured by the
standard first difference VAR model. In this case, we must implement the Granger causality
test with the VECM framework as follows:

i 1

i 1

i 1

i 1

ln ECt 1 i ln ECt i i ln GDPt i i ln FDt i i ln POPt i

p

ln TR
i 1

t i

1 ECTt 1 1t

(6)

i 1

i 1

i 1

i 1

ln GDPt 2 i ln GDPt i i ln ECt i i ln FDt i i ln POPt i

p

ln TR
i 1

t i

2 ECTt 1 2t

(7)

i 1

i 1

i 1

i 1

ln FDt 3 i ln FDt i i ln ECt i i ln GDPt i i ln POPt i

9

Apart from that, Turner (2006) also suggested a surface response procedure to compute the small sample
critical values. Unfortunately, this procedure is limited to four variables cases only.

ln TR

3 ECTt 1 3t

t i

i 1

(8)

i 1

i 1

i 1

i 1

ln POPt 4 i ln POPt i i ln ECt i i ln GDPt i i ln FDt i

p

ln TR

4 ECTt 1 4t

i 1

i 1

i 1

i 1

t i

i 1

(9)

ln TRt 5 i ln TRt i i ln ECt i i ln GDPt i i ln FDt i

p

ln POP
i 1

t i

5 ECTt 1 5t

(10)

where is the first difference operator and ln is the natural logarithm. The residuals it are
assumed to be normally distributed and white noise. ECTt 1 is the one period lagged errorcorrection term derived from the cointegration equation. The ECTt 1 variable will be
excluded from that model if the variables are not cointegrated. The optimal lag length p is
determined by the Akaikes Information Criterion (AIC) because of its superior performance
in small sample (Ltkepohl, 2005). Next, we apply the Likelihood Ratio (LR) statistics to
ascertain the direction of Granger causality between the variables of interest. In this study, we
test the following hypotheses:

H 01 : 1 2 L p 0 , implying that GDP does not Granger-cause EC,

H 02 : 1 2 L p 0 , implying that EC does not Granger-cause GDP,

H 03 : 1 2 L p 0 , implying that FD does not Granger-cause EC,

H 04 : 1 2 L p 0 , implying that POP does not Granger-cause EC,

and so on for the other variables.

5.

EMPIRICAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this section, we begin by testing the order of integration using the ADF, PP and
KPSS unit root tests. The results of the three unit root tests are reported in Table 3. At the 1
per cent significant level, the results of ADF unit root test suggest that all variables are
integrated of order one, I(1) process, except for population is found to be I(0) process.
However, the PP and KPSS unit root tests exhibit that all variables included population are
stationary at the first difference. As noted in the earlier section, the ADF test often has weak
power when the sample size of a study is small, so we preferred to use the results provided by
PP and KPSS unit root tests. For this reason, we surmised that the variables can be well
characterised as I(1) process.10

INSERT TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE

Given that all variables are integrated of order one, we proceed to examine whether
electricity consumption, economic growth, financial development, population, and foreign
trade are cointegrated using the bounds testing approach to cointegration. An important issue
in applying bounds testing approach to cointegration is the selection of the optimal lag length.
We set the maximum lag length at 3 years which is sufficiently long for annual data study to
capture the dynamic relationship, then the AIC statistic is use to choose the best ARDL
models. AIC statistics is preferred in this study because it has superior properties, particularly
in small sample (Ltkepohl, 2005). In addition, a set of diagnostic tests are conducted on the
selected ARDL models. Overall, the selected ARDL models passed a number of diagnostic
tests. The Jarque-Bera normality tests indicate that the residuals are normally distributed. The
10

We aware that in the present of structural break(s) the standard unit root tests may be inappropriate hence we
also performed the m-breaks unit root tests proposed by Kapetanios (2005). Evidently, the computed statistics
cannot reject the null hypothesis of a unit root up to three structural breaks (i.e. m = 1, m = 2, and m = 3) for all
variables at the 5 per cent significance level. Therefore, we conclude that all variables are non-stationary at level
and there are no additional unit root evidence compare to the standard unit root tests.

Ramsey RESET and the autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) tests show
that the selected models are free from the general specification error and also ARCH
problems. Finally, the Breusch-Godfrey LM test cannot reject the null hypothesis of serial
correlation up to second order, meaning that the selected ARDL models are absence of serial
correction problem. Therefore, we surmise that the selected ARDL models are appropriate to
be used for the bounds testing approach to cointegration. The calculated F-statistics for
cointegration together with the diagnostic tests are reported in Table 4.

INSERT TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE

In all cases, the calculated F-statistics are greater than the 1 per cent upper bound critical
values provided by Narayan (2005). Therefore, the null hypothesis of no cointegration can be
rejected, implying that a long-run equilibrium relationship exists between electricity
consumption, economic growth, financial development, population and foreign trade in
Portugal.
After determining the presence of cointegration, it is also interesting to perform the
Granger causality test to provide a clearer picture for policymakers to formulate energy,
environment, and economic policies by understanding the direction of causality. As the
variables are cointegrated, we employed the Granger causality in the VECM framework to
determine the direction of causality between the variables. The results of Granger causality
are presented in Table 5. Since the variables are cointegrated, the direction of causality can be
divided into short- and long-run causation. The t-significance of the one period lagged errorcorrection term ECTt 1 , represents the long-run causality, while the joint significance LR
tests of the lagged explanatory variables represents the short-run causality. Begin with the
long-run causality, our empirical results suggest that the ECTt 1 coefficients are negative
17

signed and statistically significant in all VECMs, implying that there is bi-directional
causality between the variables of interest in the long-run. In addition to that, the significance
of ECTt 1 also exhibits that if the system expose to shock it will convergence to the long-run
equilibrium at a relatively slow speed for financial development (0.116) and population (
0.258) VECMs compare to the convergence speed of electricity consumption (0.750),
economic growth (0.777), and foreign trade (0.772) VECMs.

INSERT TABLE 5 ABOUT HERE

Contrary with the findings of long-run causality, we find that the short-run causality
vary among VECMs. In summary, our empirical evidence shows that at the 1 per cent level,
there is Granger causality runs from economic growth, financial development, and population
to electricity consumption. However, at the same level of significance, the results show
Granger causality runs from electricity consumption to economic growth, population and
foreign trade. With respect to these findings, we affirmed that electricity consumption,
economic growth, and population are bi-directional causality, and these results are
significantly contradicted with the findings provided by the earlier studies for Portugal (Aqeel
and Butt, 2001; Chontanawat et al., 2008; Ciarreta et al., 2009; Narayan and Prasad, 2008),
but in line with Shahbaz et al. (2011). Apart from that, at the 5 per cent level, we also find
evidence of Granger causality runs from electricity consumption, financial development, and
population to economic growth. As a result, the Portuguese dataset support the energy-led
growth, finance-led growth, and population-led growth hypotheses.11 These evidences
strongly indicate that the variables in the system are dynamically interacted. Moreover,
energy, financial development and population are three important catalysts of growth for
11

The Granger causality test results indicate uni-directional causality running from economic growth to foreign
trade. This implied that export-led growth or trade-led growth may not valid in Portugal.

18

Portugals economic growth. Therefore, the diversification of Portugal economic structure to

services-based such as energy, finance and health sectors will improve economic efficiency
and the size of population which eventually lead to sustainable economic growth.

6.

CONCLUSION AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

To fill the lacuna of the previous studies, this study attempts to re-investigate the
relationship between electricity consumption, economic growth, financial development,
population, and foreign trade in Portugal using a multivariate framework analysis. In order to
achieve the objective of this study, we employed the bounds testing approach to cointegration
to examine the presence of cointegrating relationship. For policymaking, we applied the
Granger causality test within the VECM framework to verify the direction of causality
between electricity consumption, economic growth, financial development, population, and
foreign trade in Portugal.
As a values added to the existing literature for Portugal in this topic, we find that the
variables are cointegrated, meaning that there is a stable long-run relationship between
electricity consumption and its determinants although there might be deviation in the shortrun. Differ from those studies for Portugal, this study found that electricity consumption and
economic growth is bi-directional causality, implying that energy conservation policy (growth
policy) may adversely affect the economic growth (environment or pollution) in Portugal.
Therefore, the Portuguese government should encourage research and development on
technological innovation for energy savings. In doing so, we could simultaneously reduce
environmental degrading and also enhance economic development in the Portuguese
economy. In addition to that, alternative energies such as solar power, hydro power, and wind
power should be considered because these alternative energies are more environmental

19

friendly compare to fossil fuel. It is also vital to point out that financial development and
population growth not only cause the usage of electricity, they also Granger cause economic
growth in Portugal. Therefore, energy alone is insufficient to promote economic growth in
Portugal; it must be complemented with other factors such as financial development and
population growth.

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23

Table 1: The summary of multi-country studies on the electricity-growth nexus

No. Authors

Period

1.

Wolde-Rufael (2006)

19712001

2.

Yoo (2006)

19712002

3.

Chen et al. (2007)

19712001

4.

Squalli (2007)

19802003

5.

Narayan and Prasad (2008)

19602002

6.

Yoo and Kwak (2010)

19752006

7.

Ozturk and Acaravci (2010)

19802006

Countries

Methodology
Direction of Granger causality
ARDL Bounds testing; Toda-Yamamotos
EC Y (Benin, Congo DR, Tunisia)
17 African
test for causality Augmented VAR
Y EC (Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal,
Zambia, Zimbabwe)
EC Y (Egypt, Gabon, Morocco)
EC
Y (Algeria, Congo Rep., Kenya, South Africa,
Sudan)
Y EC (Indonesia, Thailand)
4 ASEAN Engle-Granger; Johansen-Juselius;
Granger causality; Hsiaos causality
EC Y (Malaysia, Singapore)
VAR
Johansen-Juselius; Granger causality
EC Y (Hong Kong)
10 Asian
VECM
Y EC (India, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore)
EC
Y (China, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan,
Thailand)
ARDL Bounds testing;
EC Y (Indonesia, Nigeria, UAE, Venezuela)
11 OPEC
Toda-Yamamotos test for causality
Augmented VAR
Y EC (Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya,)
EC Y (Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia)
Toda-Yamamotos test for causality with EC Y (Australia, Czech Rep., Italy, Slovak Rep.,
30 OECD
bootstrapping approach
Portugal)
Y EC (Finland, Hungary, Netherlands)
EC Y (Iceland, Korea, UK)
EC
Y (rest of the 19 countries)
Johansen-Juselius; Granger causality;
EC Y (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia,
7 South
Hsiaos test for causalityVAR and
American
Ecuador)
VECM
EC Y (Venezuela)
EC
Y (Peru)
ARDL Bounds testing; Granger causality
EC Y (Hungary)
4 European
VECM
EC
Y (Albania, Bulgaria, Romania)

24

 represent uni-directional causality, bi-directional

Note: EC and Y represent electricity consumption and economic growth, respectively. , and
causality, and neutral causality, respectively.

Table 2: The summary of major findings of single-country studies on the electricity-growth nexus
No. Growth hypothesis
Conservation hypothesis
Feedback hypothesis
1.
Aqeel and Butt (2001)
Ghosh (2002)
Yang (Yang, 2000)
2.
Altinay and Karagol (2005)
Narayan and Smyth (2005)
Jumbe (Jumbe, 2004)
3.
Lee and Chang (2007)
Yoo and Kim (2006)
Zachariadis and Pashourtidou (2007)
4.
Shiu and Lam (2004)
Ho and Siu (2007)
Tang (2008)
5.
Yoo (2005)
Mozumder and Marathe (2007)
Odhiambo (2009a)
6.
Narayan and Singh (2007)
Ciarreta et al. (2009)
Tang (2009)
7.
Yuan et al. (2007)
Ciarreta and Zarraga (2010)
Lean and Smyth (2010)
8.
Abosedra et al. (2009)
Shahbaz and Feridun (2011)
Oudraogo (2010)
9.
Chandran et al. (2010)
Lorde et al. (2010)
10. Odhiambo (2009b)
Acaravci (2010)
11.
Shahbaz et al. (2011)
Note: Growth hypothesis represents uni-directional causality running from electricity consumption to economic growth;
Conservation hypothesis represents uni-directional causality running from economic growth to electricity consumption;
Feedback hypothesis represents bi-directional causality; Neutrality hypothesis represents no causality.

25

Variables
ln ECt

Table 3: Unit root estimation

ADF
PP
3.173 (0)
3.063 (3)

KPSS
0.243 (3)***

ln ECt

5.106 (3)***

9.330 (3)***

0.052 (3)

ln GDPt

2.036 (2)

2.576 (3)

0.170 (3)**

ln GDPt

4.901 (3)***

3.997 (3)**

0.060 (3)

ln FDt

1.833 (2)

0.999 (3)

0.232 (3)***

ln FDt

4.410 (0)***

4.455 (3)***

0.099 (3)

ln POPt

7.200 (3)***

1.837 (3)

0.162 (3)**

ln POPt

4.361 (3)***

6.263 (3)***

0.067 (3)

ln TRt

3.001 (1)

2.698 (3)

0.120 (3)*

ln TRt

4.625 (3)***

5.422 (3)***

0.052 (3)

Note: ***, ** and * denote the significant at the 1, 5 and 10 per cent level, respectively.
The optimal lag order for ADF test is determined by AIC, while the bandwidths for PP
and KPSS tests are determined by using the Newey-West Bartlett kernel.

26

Table 4: The results of ARDL cointegration test

Diagnostic tests

Bounds testing to cointegration

FEC EC GDP, FD, POP , TR

Optimal
lag length
1, 2, 1, 1, 0

F-statistics

2
NORMAL

2
ARCH

2
RESET

2
SERIAL

7.419***

0.504

[1]: 0.082

[1]: 0.336

[1]: 1.623; [2]: 3.027

FGDP GDP EC , FD, POP, TR 1, 1, 3, 2, 3

10.187***

1.303

[1]: 0.901

[1]: 1.015

[1]: 0.413; [2]: 1.014

2, 2, 1, 2, 0

10.432***

0.969

[1]: 1.309

[1]: 0.696

[1]: 0.027; [2]: 2.740

FPOP POP EC , GDP , FD, TR 2, 2, 1, 2, 1

16.057***

1.596

[1]: 0.043

[2]: 2.753

[1]: 0.052; [2]: 0.298

1, 0, 1, 0, 3

22.684***

1.474

[1]: 0.068

[1]: 0.004

[1]: 1.964; [2]: 3.207

FFD FD EC , GDP, POP , TR

FTR TR EC , GDP, FD, POP

Significant level
1 per cent level
5 per cent level
10 per cent level

Critical values (T=40)#

Lower bounds I(0) Upper bounds I(1)
4.045
5.898
2.962
4.268
2.483
3.647

Note: The asterisks ***, ** and * denote the significant at 1, 5 and 10 per cent levels, respectively. The optimal lag length is determined by AIC. [ ] is the order
of diagnostic tests. # Critical values are collected from Narayan (2005).

27

Table 5: The results of Granger causality test

Dependent
Variable

Type of causality
Short-run
ln ECt i ln GDPt i

ln FD

t i

ln POP

t i

ln TR

t i

Likelihood Ratio (LR) statistics [p-values]

Long-run
ECTt 1
[t-statistic]

ln ECt

31.937***
[0.0000]

13.573***
[0.0011]

9.469***
[0.0088]

0.650
[0.4199]

0.750***
[4.446]

ln GDPt

24.801***
[0.0000]

9.639**
[0.0219]

30.807***
[0.0000]

1.656
[0.1981]

0.777***
[5.360]

ln FDt

0.407
[0.5237]

0.108
[0.7425]

6.309**
[0.0427]

5.259*
[0.0721]

0.116**
[2.472]

ln POPt

16.012***
[0.0003]

48.882***
[0.0000]

0.375
[0.5432]

16.942***
[0.0002]

0.258***
[4.642]

ln TRt

16.860***
[0.0021]

8.444**
[0.0147]

12.004***
[0.0025]

4.492**
[0.0340]

0.772***
[4.469]

Note: The asterisks ***, ** and * denote the significance at the 1, 5 and 10 per cent level, respectively.

28

Figure 1: The plots of electricity consumption per capita and real GDP per capita

29