One should caution that any attempt to compare the behaviour of different countries requires that the use of common models which may not in some instances be appropriate. One example is the Philippines, for which regression analysis summarized in Table 3 is amomalous. The reason for this is clear when the data are plotted as in Figure 2. Occasional inappropriateness of this sort does not undermine the analysis provided it is recognized and the right adjustments made. Electricity Demand and Elasticity A similar elasticity analysis may be made for electricity demand. The log-log plots are shown in Figures 3 and 4, not only for ASEAN countries which are developing countries with low income, but also for the developed countries with high income such as Japan and France and some countries with intermediary income such as Spain and Greece. Again there is a strong linearity among the trajectories. The pattern is linear past a certain income threshold. On Figure 3, one can see that the gradient of the regression of the ASEAN countries, specially for Indonesia, is higher that of developed countries as Japan and France. It means that the present technology allows a rapid energy development for the developing countries. Figure 4 reveals remarkable consistency between Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. The trajectories of the three countries lie closely along a single straight line. The gradients of these traj ectories of generation are the same and approximately constant over the period; the trajectories are coincident. In Addition, these trajectories are almost parallel with that of Greece. The trajectory for Indonesia is markedly different. It begins from a lower base, because Indonesia was under-electrified compared to other ASEAN countries, but has a higher gradient implying that the country will “catch up” and join the same trajectory as the other countries in the region. On these figures, two developing countries (Japan and France) with high incomes and two intermediary countries (Spain and Greece) are included. However, all trajectories lie in a narrow corridor, as can be seem on figure (4), which show the trajectories on a per capita basis. A regression analysis of the pooled data for Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand gives an estimated income elasticity of 1.65. This elasticity confirms the visual impression of a high level of conformity of the data to a simple exponential model. If Indonesia is included and a regression made for ASEAN as a single economic entity then the income elasticity for ASEAN would be about 1.98. The same regression applied to the developed countries gives an income elasticity of about 1. In ASEAN countries, any improvement is not expected to change this elasticity significantly due to growing industrialization and increasing income. Moreover
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