Do COVID-19 Lock-Downs Affect Business Cycle? Analysis Using Energy Consumption Cycle Clock for Selected European Countries

Tadeusz Kufel (), Paweł Kufel and Marcin Błażejowski
Additional contact information
Paweł Kufel: Faculty of Finance and Management, WSB University in Torun, ul. Młodzieżowa 31a, 87-100 Torun, Poland

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-27

Abstract: On 11 March 2020, the WHO declared the COVID-19 epidemic to be a global pandemic. This was a consequence of the rapid increase in the number of people with positive test results, the increase in deaths due to COVID-19, and the lack of pharmaceutical drugs. Governments introduced national lockdowns, which have impacted both energy consumption and economies. The purpose of this paper is to answer the following question: do COVID-19 lockdowns affect the business cycle? We used the cycle clock approach to assess the magnitude of decrease in electricity consumption in the three waves of the epidemic, namely, April 2020, November 2021, and April 2021. Additionally, we checked the relation between energy consumption and GDP by means of spectral analysis. Results for selected 28 European countries confirm an impact of the introduced non-pharmaceutical interventions on both energy consumption and business cycle. The reduction of restrictions in subsequent pandemic waves increased electricity consumption, which suggests movement out of the economic recession.

Keywords: consumption of electricity; COVID-19; lockdown; non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs); business cycle clock (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/1/340/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/1/340/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:1:p:340-:d:717400

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().