Research on electric power development and economic growth in Hebei Province based on business cycle analysis

With the improvement of China’s electrification level, the relationship between electricity power consumption and social economy development is getting closer. Under this background, in this paper, the business cycle analysis method is applied to the electricity power industry in Hebei Province, and the link between electric power generation and economic development is determined through the prosperity index. First of all, the steps and methods of business cycle analysis were introduced, and the time-difference grey correlation method considering the consistency of time series to screen indicators was put forward, thus to reduce the number of indicators. Next, Hebei Province was taken as an example, and its monthly data related to power generation and economic growth in the 10 years from 2009 to 2018 to was selected to build the business cycle indicator system, at last the composite prosperity index of Hebei Province in electric power industry was calculated. This research results manifest that it is feasible to apply the business cycle analysis to the power industry.

Putting the Cycle Back into Business Cycle Analysis

Are business cycles mainly a response to persistent exogenous shocks, or do they instead reflect a strong endogenous mechanism which produces recurrent boom-bust phenomena? In this paper we present evidence in favor of the second interpretation and we highlight the set of key elements that influence our answer. The elements that tend to favor this type of interpretation of business cycles are (i) slightly extending the frequency window one associates with business cycle phenomena, (ii) allowing for strategic complementarities across agents that arise due to financial frictions, and (iii) allowing for a locally unstable steady state in estimation. (JEL E22, E24, E23, E44)