Impacts of financial development on energy consumption structure: New evidence from panel threshold regression model

Abstract

This paper mainly tests the presence of threshold effect of financial development on energy consumption structure (ECS) with respect to the level of economic development. Based on the panel data of Chinese provinces from 1998 to 2017, the panel threshold regression (PTR) model was adopted to estimate the nonlinear relationship between financial development and the ECS. Two proxies in the scale and efficiency dimensions were designed, and the per-capita GDP was taken as the threshold variable. The results show that the impacts of financial development on the ECS have double threshold features; the correlation between financial development and the ECS changes from negative to positive, with the growing level of economic development. It was also found that economic development, R&D investment and foreign direct investment all contribute greatly to the ECS optimization, while urbanization and industrial development significantly suppresses the ECS quality. The research results provide reference to the optimization of the ECS through financial means.