This paper presents a relatively simple procedure to examine the responsiveness of energy demand to measures of economic activity and electricity price. We estimate the demand function for electricity both for households and for industry in 29 countries, mainly European countries, in the last 10 years, using a panel aggregate data.
Preliminary results suggest, as expected, that price has a negative significant effect on the electricity consumption. This is the case for both households and industry level for the same sample of countries. Our results also suggest that short-run elasticity of electricity consumption with respect to aggregate output seems to have been stable and unit elastic during the last decade. Moreover, price elasticity is more elastic and more stable in the industry sector than households are.