Analyses of energy-GDP-export nexus: The way-forward

Highlights: • Energy-GDP-export nexus examined by using snowball sampling technique. • Only 6% studies found evidence in favor of energy conservation hypothesis. • Important caveats are highlighted for further insights. • Using structural breaks and reliable model conditioning found pivotal. • Proposed suggestions may potentially a way-forward to the energy literature. The role of exports in energy-GDP nexus is relatively under-studied topic. We surveyed some major studies following the principle of backward snowballing sampling on the subject considering country and panel based analyses therein for the role of energy conservations and economic sustainability. We concluded from these selected studies that 43.7% studies found evidence in favor of growth hypothesis, 50% of studies found evidence in favor of feedback hypothesis and 6% of these total studies found evidence in favor of neutrality hypothesis. The findings imply a serious caution in the implementation of energy conservation options via employing framework without introducing structural breaks. Moreover, disaggregation of energy input into its components (Oil, coal, gas or fossil and non-fossil fuels) corroborates pertinent information on the role of exports in energy-GDP nexus. Thus, overcoming the caveats of extant studies considering this survey therein proposed suggestions for improving the modeling framework may potentially become insightful to the literature on energy conservation and the way forward.