Does Export product diversification help to reduce energy demand: Exploring the contextual evidences from the newly industrialized countries

Highlights: • The impact of export product diversification on energy demand is investigated. • 10 NICs over 1971–2014 are analyzed. • Results show that export product diversification reduces energy consumption. • Extensive and intensive margins also help to reduce overall energy demand. This article investigates the impact of export product diversification, extensive margin and intensive margin on emerging economies energy demand covering the period from 1971 to 2014. The study contributes to energy economics by unveiling the interaction between export diversification and energy demand of 10 newly industries countries (NICs). Owing to the growth prospect and trade volume of these nations, it is necessary to assess the various facades of export growth on the energy demand. In this pursuit, we have considered the export product diversification index in its aggregate and disaggregated forms (i.e. extensive margin and intensive margin) in this study. The empirical estimation has been carried out based on GMM, FGLS, FMOLS, and DOLS techniques. The empirical results demonstrate that export diversification, extensive margin, and intensive margin help to reduce the overall energy demand in NICs. Further, the empirical outcomes identify that economic growth, urbanization, and natural resources increase energy consumption. The study discusses fruitful policy implications regarding the exports diversification and energy demand nexus for emerging economies.