The Relation between Financial Development, Energy Consumption and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence for the United States

This paper examines the relation between financial development, energy consumption and economic growth in the United States (U.S) for the period 1966-2011. We use a vector error correction model (VECM) to investigate the effect of financial development and energy consumption on economic growth in the U.S. In addition to examining the relation in the long run of the aforementioned variables using Johansen co-integration analysis, we also examine the short-run and long-run causalities between them. In addition to economic growth, financial development and energy consumption variables, we also examine the impact of real interest rate, gross fixed capital formation and trade openness on economic growth. We find that there is at least one co-integrating relation among the variables. There is some evidence that in the long run financial development causes economic growth; however, there is no evidence that economic growth causes financial development. Neither do we find evidence that financial development positively affects energy consumption either in the short- or long-run. However, in the short run, we find some evidence of two-way causality between economic growth and financial development.