Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser Renewable energy consumption, International trade, oil price and economic growth inter-linkages: The case of Tunisia Riadh Brini a , Mohamed Amara b, ⁎ , Hatem Jemmali c a Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management of Nabeul, University of Carthage, and International Interaction Research Center (LIEI), University of Tunis El-Manar, Tunisia b Higher School of Economic and Commercial Sciences of Tunis, University of Tunis, Tunisia c Higher Institute of Accounting and Business Administration, University of Manouba, and Laboratory for Research on Quantitative Development Economics (LAREQUAD), University of Tunis El-Manar, B.P. 248 El Manar II, 2092 Tunis, Tunisia ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Renewable energy consumption International trade Oil price Economic growth ARDL Tunisia ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the small but growing literature on the linkages between renewable energy consumption, international trade, oil price and economic growth. It aims to investigate such dynamic relationships using the bounds testing approach to cointegration and the ARDL methodology for Tunisia over the period 1980–2011. The main empirical findings reveal the presence of a bidirectional relationship between renewable energy consumption and international trade in the short-run. Indeed, an increase in oil price may imply an increase of renewable energy consumption. Furthermore, a unidirectional relationship between renewable energy and oil price is proven in the short-run. 1. . Introduction Over the past four decades, the lion's share of the literature on energy consumption has focused on the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth. Four testable hypotheses can be distinguished to examine such relationship: growth, conserva- tion, feedback, and neutrality hypothesis [2,30,41,38]. The growth hypothesis regards economy strongly linked to energy. According to this assumption, any reduction in energy use will lower automatically economic growth. Under the second hypothesis (conservation hypoth- esis), it's assumed that unidirectional causality runs only from eco- nomic growth to energy use. Thus, any attempt to diminish energy consumption may not have much influence on economic growth. The feedback hypothesis presumes the existence of bi-directional causality between energy consumption and economic growth. Under the fourth hypothesis (neutrality hypothesis), it's assumed that any change in energy consumption might not have any effect on economic growth, and vice versa [8]. The first study on the growth-energy relationship was conducted by Kraft and Kraft, [18] who found unidirectional causality from gross national product (GNP) growth to energy consumption using US data from 1947 to 1974. Yet, reducing two years from the initial dataset, Akarca and Long [1] did not find, surprisingly, any association between the two variables. They argue that the 1973 oil embargo is the responsible for the contamination of used data series. Using data from six industrialized countries and with a time period of 30 years (1952– 1982), Erol, Yu [13] found feedback causality running between economic growth (EG) and energy consumption (EC) for Japan, unidirectional causality from EC to EG for Canada, from EG to EC for Germany and Italy, and none for France and England. Focusing on a set of developing countries, Masih and Masih [26] postulated unidirectional causality from EC to EG in India, and from EG to EC in Pakistan and Indonesia, but none for Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. Soytas and Sari [40] postulated that economic growth Granger affects energy use in Italy and Korea, while a unidirectional causality runs from energy use to economic growth in other developed countries such as France, Germany, Japan and Turkey. Huang et al. [16] supported the neutrality hypothesis for low-income countries, but found unidirectional causality from EG to EC for middle and high-income countries, similarly to Aqeel and Butt [7], Shahbaz and Lean [39], Shahbaz and Feridun [37] for Pakistan, Lee [21] for France, Italy and Japan, and Lee and Chien [22] for France and Japan. The reverse causal relationship running from EG to EC was postulated by Lee [21] for Canada, UK, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland; Narayan and Smyth (2008) for G-7 countries; Bowden and Payne [10] for the US. The disagreement among the aforementioned studies can be due mainly to methodological and data differences and countries hetero- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.03.067 Received 26 January 2016; Received in revised form 20 January 2017; Accepted 10 March 2017 ⁎ Correspondence to: 4, Rue Abou Zakaria El Hafsi 1089 Montfleury, Tunis, Tunisia. E-mail addresses: riadh.brini@fsegs.rnu.tn (R. Brini), mohamed.amara.isg@gmail.com (M. Amara), hatemjemmali79@gmail.com (H. Jemmali). Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 76 (2017) 620–627 1364-0321/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK