Date of Award

2019-01-01

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Economics

Advisor(s)

Thomas M. Fullerton

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.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

47 pages

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Felipe Francisco Mejia

Included in

Economics Commons

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