A Empirical Analysis Of The Relationship Between Chinese Energy Consumption And Economic Growth

In the evolution of human being, the use of energy happens synchronically in the social development. It was not until modern industrialization that energy began to strongly influence human life in all around. Economic development requires energy, while the development of energy is based on economic growth. Both economy and energy are closely related. In the current tendency of economic globalization, different nations have attached increasing importance to energy, and the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth has also been listed on sustainable development strategy by different countries. Therefore, it is worth studying the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth.Generally speaking, most scholars have studied the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth from the perspective of the entire China. The great gap of economic development between East China and mid-western China has usually been neglected. The relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in those regions can hardly be demonstrated in a simple model. Besides, the Ordinary Least Squares(OLS) regression , which they mostly use, can not yield correct results for a study on China due to regional differences. Even though some people have made some research on individual provinces, their use of different models may result in difficulty in comparison among different regions. The development of an entire country is dependent on the balanced development of its different regions. Thus it is essentially important to explore the relationship between economic growth and energy consumption of East China, Mid-western China and the whole country at large.Quartile regression is superior to the OLS regression in certain circumstances. It can be used to analyze different cases by means of the same variable. Then this thesis aims to probe into the close relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in China, with the aid of Quartile regression, which is to be applied to the quantitative analysis of the relationship between economic growth and energy consumption in East China, Mid-western China and the whole country at large.Meanwhile, the use rate of energy in China is still very low, the development of secondary industry is mainly reliant on great consumption of energy, and a great gap between East and Mid-western China is still obvious. Besides, some measures and suggestions are also put forward for the consideration of the relationship between economic growth and energy consumption,so as to realize the sustainable development in China.What are innovative in the thesis lie in two points: first, the application of one model to explain the relationship between economic growth and energy consumption in East China, Mid-western China and the whole country at large; second, the use of a new regression method—Quartile regression—to analyze the model of energy demand.