Coal consumption and economic growth: The causality puzzle. Review of international literature

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on the relationship between coal consumption and economic growth, highlighting both the theoretical framework and the empirical evidence. The direction of causality between coal consumption and economic growth has been found to vary from one country to the next, depending on the data set and the methodology employed by the researcher. However, there is overwhelming support for a bidirectional relationship between coal consumption and economic growth. This paper is different from other reviews, in that it critically evaluates the impact of coal consumption on economic growth, as well as the causal relationship between these two variables. The paper concludes that the causal relationship between coal consumption and economic growth is ambiguous.