Residential Electricity Consumption in Las Cruces
Abstract
This study examines how residential electricity consumption (KWHC) reacts to changes in the price of electricity, the price of natural gas, real income per capita, heating degree days, and cooling degree days. Annual frequency data analyzed are for Las Cruces, the second largest metropolitan economy in New Mexico. The sample period is 1977 to 2016. An Autoregressive-Distributed Lag model (ARDL) is employed to obtain long-run and short-run elasticities. In the long-run, residential consumption responds in a statistically reliable manner only to real per capita income. In the short-run, residential consumption responds reliably to all of the variables except heating degree days. Somewhat surprisingly, the short-run results also include an own-price elasticity that is slightly positive, implying that residential electricity has an upward sloping demand curve in Las Cruces.
Subject Area
Economics|Energy
Recommended Citation
Mejia, Felipe Francisco, "Residential Electricity Consumption in Las Cruces" (2019). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI27668802.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI27668802