A dynamic panel study of energy consumption-economic growth nexus: evidence from the former Soviet Union countries.

This paper examines the relationship between energy consumption and real gross domestic product ( GDP) per capita for the 15 former Soviet Union countries during the period 1992-2009. These countries have been rarely investigated with regard to the related nexus in the literature despite the important role of these countries in energy markets as producers and consumers. Panel unit root tests, panel cointegration tests and panel vector error correction model in a dynamic panel framework are employed to infer the causal relationship. The empirical results show that there is a unidirectional causal relationship running from energy consumption to the real GDP per capita in the long run but not in the short-run for the former Soviet Union countries and Commonwealth Independent States countries regardless Russia is included or excluded. However, we discover a bidirectional relationship for oil importer and natural gas importer countries. Therefore, the findings of this study support the growth hypothesis for the former subsegments and feedback hypothesis for the latter subsegments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]