On the Relationship between Disaggregated Energy Production and GDP in Italy

Abstract

This paper tries to assess the relationship between disaggregate energy production and real aggregate income in Italy by undertaking cointegration analyses using annual data from 1883 to 2009. After a brief introduction, a survey of the economic literature on this issue is shown, before discussing the data and introducing some econometric techniques. Stationarity tests reveal that the series are non-stationary, or I(1). Cointegration analyses reveal that there is a long-run relationship between GDP and geothermoelectric production in the 1919–1939 period. Whilst, for the post-war years, we find a cointegration relationship for all sources of energy. Causality tests roughly confirm a bi-directional flow in the long-run, so that energy production and economic growth complement each other, since economic growth may demand more energy, whereas more energy consumption may also induce economic growth.