This paper analyzes the cointegration of electricity consumption, prices, and GDP as well as the long-run price and income elasticities for a sample of European Union (EU) countries. We control for smooth structural changes in the data using recently developed unit root and autoregressive distributed lag (ADL) cointegration tests, which approximate an unknown number of smooth breaks with a flexible Fourier function. Structural breaks in electricity consumption may exist in EU countries because of activities associated with the European Energy Union and country-specific idiosyncracies. Our results indicate that the Fourier cointegration test rejects the null hypothesis of no cointegration more often in comparison to the standard ADL test. Elasticity estimates show clear differences between old and new member states when structural breaks are ignored, but less so when using structural breaks methods.

本文分析了欧盟国家样本中的电力消耗，价格和GDP的协整关系以及长期价格和收入弹性。我们使用最近开发的单位根和自回归分布滞后（ADL）协整测试来控制数据中的平滑结构变化，这些测试通过灵活的傅立叶函数近似估计了未知数量的平滑中断。由于与欧洲能源联盟和特定国家的特殊性有关的活动，欧盟国家可能存在用电量的结构性中断。我们的结果表明，与标准ADL检验相比，傅里叶协整检验更否定了没有协整的零假设。