| 摘要: | Developing countries are trying to reduce their energy consumption under the auxiliary of the renewable energy either by inviting foreign direct investment (FDI) of new technology or imports of renewable energy technologies from developed countries. The final goal is to enhance economic growth without sacrificing environmental benefits, to increase productivity, export more goods, import advanced technologies, and strengthen competitive advantages for the future development. Therefore, to investigate the causal relationship between energy consumption and several economic related variables is essential for policy makers and researchers in developing countries. However, studies that aim to examine the causalities mentioned above for Central American countries, such as Guatemala and El Salvador remain scarce! Consequently, exploring the causal relationship among energy consumption, economic growth, FDI, exports, and imports for Guatemala and El Salvador becomes the focus. Granger causality technique has been applied using annual data from 1980 to 2012 for the analysis. The empirical results for Guatemala reveal that there is a unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to GDP, a bidirectional causality between exports and energy consumption, and a bidirectional causality between imports and energy consumption. In the case of El Salvador, there is a unidirectional causality running from imports and exports to FDI, and a unidirectional causality flowing from FDI to GDP. With these results, it is suggested that both countries should put efforts into promoting trade, investment and energy policies to generate economic growth. This may potentially attract FDI, increase economic growth and reduce energy consumption with the use of clean energy technologies. |
