How does energy poverty affect economic development? A panel data analysis of South Asian countries

This study examines the interaction between energy poverty, employment, education, per capita income, inflation, and economic development using panel data for seven South Asian countries. The present study uses panel data spanning the period from 1995 to 2017, panel cointegration, autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL), and penalized quantile regression (PQR) estimators to test for cointegration in the long-run. The estimated results reveal that both panel cointegration approaches (Pedroni and Johansen–Fisher) demonstrate the existence of the long-term relationship between energy poverty, employment, education, per capita income, inflation, and economic development. The ARDL estimates show that energy poverty has a negative influence on economic development in both the long-run and the short-run. The results provide support for economic, social, and environmental policymakers in their decision-making. This study suggests that, in relation to financing the green and low-carbon economy concept, both the public sector and private industries need to make further efforts to use modern, energy-efficient, and green technologies, which are beneficial both for economic progress as well as managing the ecological degradation process.