A social network analysis regarding electricity consumption and economic growth in China

摘要

Investigation of the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth among industries helps to find nexus of industrial development. However, the existing studies in this area are limited. Most of the existing studies focus on mining the point-point relationship at the aggregate level, network relationships among industries are neglected. It may lose some vital information and result in misleading judgement would be made for policymakers. To fill up the gap, this paper explores the network relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth of eight industries in China to detect the crucial industries and key causal transmission paths of electricity consumption-economic growth among industries. Empirical results over the period from 2007Q1 to 2017Q3 indicate that (a) Agriculture, Financial Industry, and Real Estate Activities are the driving forces of economic growth relation network (GRN) and the engines of social development; (b) the economic growth of Transport, Storage and Post is the key bridge of overall-relation network (ORN) and GRN; (c) the electricity consumption of Construction and Real Estate Activities are the endpoints of the ORN which are affected by economic growth in other industries; (d) The most important transmission section of ORN is Industry (G2)- Transport, Storage and Post (G5)- Construction (G3)- Industry (E2), and that of GRN is Industry (G2)- Transport, Storage and Post (G5)- Construction (G3). (c) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.