Estimation of Short-Run and Long-Run Elasticities of Energy Demand From Panel Data Using Shrinkage Estimators

Abstract

This article discusses the problem of obtaining short-run and long-run elasticities of energy demand for each of 49 states in the United States using data for 21 years. Estimation using the time series data by each state gave several wrong signs for the coefficients. Estimation using pooled data was not valid because the hypothesis of homogeneity of the coefficients was rejected. Shrinkage estimators gave more reasonable results. The article presents in a unified framework the classical, empirical Bayes, and Bayes approaches for deriving these estimators.