The objective of this research is to estimate the residential, commercial and industrial demand for electric energy in the Northeast of Brazil during the period 1970-2003. Two different methodologies were used to compute price and income elasticities of demand: i) DOLS, proposed by Stock and Watson (1993); and ii) Regime Switching, by Gregory and Hansen (1996). Error Correction Models were estimated using the cointegrating vectors. These models are used to perform long-run forecasts of demand for the period 2004-2010. The main results are then compared to those from other studies about Brazilian's price and income elasticities of demand for electric energy. Furthermore, an analysis of forecast performance shows that these models predict as good or better than Eletrobrás and Siqueira, Cordeiro Jr. e Castelar (2006).
Forecasting Models; Demand for Electric Energy; DOLS; Regime Switch; Northeast of Brazil
