Demand for Ground Transportation Fuels in 10 Asian Countries: An Application of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds Testing Approach

Abstract

This study applies the recently developed autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach to investigate demands for gasoline and diesel in the ground transportation sectors of 10 Asian countries from 1983 to 2013. Results reveal an inelastic fuel demand with respect to price, except in Hong Kong. This relation implies that the government is unable to limit fuel consumption by controlling price. Moreover, fuel demand with respect to income is generally greater than price elasticity. In other words, if the growth of the national income is faster than that of fuel price, fuel consumption will continually increase. Long‐term income elasticity is greater than unity in half of the examined countries. The demand for transportation fuel in these countries is expected to grow at a rate faster than the growth of GDP over a wide range of economies in Asia, with the implication that the concern regarding the scarcity of fossil fuel is not misplaced.