Estimating residential demand for electricity in the United States, 1965–2006 Theologos Dergiades, Lefteris Tsoulfidis ⁎ , 1 Department of Economics, University of Macedonia, 156 Egnatia Street, PO Box 1592 540 06 Thessaloniki, Greece article info abstract Article history: Received 18 December 2007 Received in revised form 11 May 2008 Accepted 18 May 2008 Available online 25 May 2008 This paper examines the residential demand for electricity in the US economy as a function of the per capita income, the price of electricity, the price of oil for heating purposes, the weather conditions and the stock of occupied housing over the period 1965–2006. This paper has two novelties: first, the occupied stock of houses as a proxy for the stock of electrical appliances and second the identification of a possible equilibrium relationship among the variables is ascertained through the recently advanced ARDL approach to cointegration. Our empirical findings give support to a stable long-run relationship implying also short-run and long-run elasticities whose size and sign are comparable to other similar studies. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: C22 Q41 Q43 Keywords: Electricity demand ARDL Cointegration Energy Economics 30 (2008) 2722–2730 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +30 2310 891788; fax: +30 2310 891 292. E-mail addresses: dergiades@uom.gr (T. Dergiades), lnt@uom.gr (L. Tsoulfidis). 1 The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments and suggestions from three anonymous referees of this journal. The usual disclaimer applies. 1. Introduction The residential demand for electricity and its determinants are of crucial importance for the con- templation of energy policy of an economy. The idea is that the supply of electricity requires the operation of electricity-generating plants which are costly to construct and also take considerable time (approximately 4 to 10 years) to have them operational. As a result, knowledge of the determinants of the demand for electricity as well as its accurate forecasting are of extreme importance for the con- templation of an effective energy policy to meet the current needs of population and, at the same time, to anticipate its future needs. Furthermore, the energy policy at the local and national level is associated with political debates because of environmental concerns. However, having a more precise knowledge of the determinants of demand and their impact we can make more informed decisions. 0140-9883/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.eneco.2008.05.005 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eneco