Energy demand and stock market development in OECD countries: A panel data analysis

This paper investigates the impact of stock market developments on oil and electricity demand of OECD member countries. We conduct different panel data methodologies and use annual data ranging from 1996 to 2011. The overall findings substantiate that income, real prices, size of the stock market and liquidity are important determinants for both oil and electricity demand. We also compute long-run elasticity coefficients by using a simple Partial Adjustment Model (PAM) and find that the long run elasticity coefficients are larger than the short run parameters. Moreover, our results show that the demand for oil and electricity is inelastic with respect to both own real price and real income over the short-run and the long-run. From a policy making perspective, the findings suggest that potential policy tools to reduce energy consumption may not be useful as the demand for energy is inelastic with respect to energy prices. Our results also manifest that although stock market deepening variables do not have a large effect on energy use as energy price and economic growth have, market size and liquidity significantly affect energy consumption. Therefore, energy demand estimations based on solely energy price and income may be inaccurate when some stock market development indicators are excluded. The empirical findings of this paper provide further insights for policy makers, energy companies and energy economists in terms of demand management policies and pricing decisions.