Investigating the Effect of Using Oil, Natural Gas and Coal on Economic Growth of Iran

Abstract he purpose of this study is to investigate the role of oil, natural gas and coal consumption in Iran’s economic growth during the periods from 1980 to 2012. The stationary analysis is performed by using ADF and Phillips-Perron unit root test and Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach was used to test for co-integration between the variables. The findings show that the variables are cointegrated; it means there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between the consumption of energy and economic growth. Accordingly the consumption of natural gas and coal was concluded to have positive and significant effect on economic growth, while the consumption of petroleum shows no significant effect on economic growth.