The Relationship between Natural Gas Consumption And Economic Growth Given Structural Breaks In Countries Exporting Natural Gas: An Approach Using Dumitrescu-Hurlin

This paper examines the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth in 11 gas exporting countries including Iran, Qatar, Venezuela, Egypt, Algeria, Russia, UAE, Libya, Nigeria, Bolivia, and Trinidad (GECF countries), using a multivariate production model for the period 1992 to 2014. The study reveals that natural gas consumption, economic growth, gross fixed capital formation and degree of trade openness are cointegrated with regard to structural breaks. When we use the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) and Dynamic Ordinary Least Square (DOLS) tests, we see that natural gas consumption in GECF countries positively affects economic growth. Furthermore, results of the joint test (short-run and long-run) of the VECM Granger causality test reveals unidirectional causality from natural gas consumption to growth for GECF countries, which proves the growth hypothesis. Regarding the direction of causality of each country in the panel, the results of the Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test (2012) support the growth hypothesis in the case of Iran, Venezuela, Egypt, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Bolivia, while for Russia it confirms the feedback hypothesis and for Qatar, Libya and Trinidad it confirms the neutral hypothesis.