Energy-Driven Economic Growth: Energy Consumption-Economic Growth Nexus Revisited for China

This paper revisits the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in the case of China using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing procedure for the period from 1952 to 2008. The results suggest that energy is one of the engines of growth in China, along with labor, capital, and international trade. In particular, a 1 percent increase in energy consumption leads to a 0.17 percent increase in gross domestic product. In addition to energy consumption, results also suggest that labor, capital, and international trade are also important factors stimulating China's economic growth.