The Relationship between Electric Power Consumption, Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Growth in Sri Lanka

Purpose: This paper investigates the long run relationship between electricity consumption, foreign direct investment and economic growth in Sri Lanka.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The annual time series data over the period 1970–2017 is considered to this study. Augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) unit root analysis is employed for examining the stationary properties of the variables. Consequently, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) analysis is employed to examining the short- run and long-run relationship between electricity consumption, foreign direct investment and economic growth in Sri Lanka. Further, this study used the diagnostic tests such as the residual normality test, heteroskedasticity and serial autocorrelation tests for misspecification to validate the parameter estimation outcomes achieved by the estimated model. CUSUM test is applied to test the stability of the model. Collected data were analyzed using STATA version 15.

Findings: The findings of the bound test confirm that the variables are cointegrated. Further the results reveal that there is a statistically positive significant relationship between electricity consumption, foreign direct investment and economic growth in Sri Lanka in the long run and short term. The empirical finding reveals that one percent increase in electricity consumption and foreign direct investment increases the GDP by 1.5 percent and 12.9 percent in the long run respectively.