Investigating the Impact of Oil, Natural Gas and Coal Consumptions on Economic Growth of Iran

In recent decades, given the relative abundance of energy resources as well as lower prices of energy in Iran (compared to global levels), the consumption of energy has increased in the production and non-production sectors. Therefore, it seems that the impact of the use of energy on the economic growth of Iran is of considerable importance. The present paper aims to investigate the role of oil, natural gas and coal consumption as well as labor and capital in the economic growth of Iran during 1980 and 2002. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was used to test cointegration between the variables. Findings demonstrate a long-term equilibrium relationship between the GDP and the explanatory variables specified in the research model. It is therefore concluded that the consumption of natural gas, coal and capital have a positive and significant effect on economic growth while the consumption of oil has a positive but insignificant effect. Also, the labor force has a negative and significant impact on economic growth