Electricity Use as an Indicator of U.S. Economic Activity

Vipin Arora () and Jozef Lieskovsky

EconStor Research Reports from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: We argue for the resurrection of an old idea: electricity use as an indicator of U.S. economic activity. Our analysis relies on associations–the 40-year correlation between growth rates in real GDP and electricity use can be as high as 89% –and intuition. Electricity use and economic conditions should move together. The vast majority of goods and services are still produced using electricity; services may require less electricity, but they still require some. Electricity use also has other strengths –it is broad-based and the data are available weekly, possibly hourly by 2015.

Keywords: electricity; economic indicator; business cycles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 E37 Q43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esrepo:126147

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