Kelsey Jack
Kelsey Jack is an Associate Professor of Environmental and Development Economics at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University in 2010, followed by a post-doctoral appointment at MIT with the Jameel Poverty Action Lab and the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative. She joined the UC Santa Barbara faculty in 2018. Her research focuses on the intersection of environmental and development economics and investigates questions from behavioral economics and contract theory. Current research projects study the design of incentives for the private provision of public goods, and are applied to issues of environment and health in Malawi, Zambia and Bolivia. Her research uses field experiments and lab experiments implemented in the field to evaluate interventions and test theory. Prior to graduate school, Kelsey lived in Laos for two years, where she worked for a conservation NGO.
Content by Kelsey Jack
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Publication - Policy Brief
Staving off the hungry season in Zambia: Testing a simple and cost-effective approach
Multiple countries in sub-Saharan African experience seasonal extreme food insecurity, a phenomenon in some cases referred to as the “hungry season.” In Zambia, the context of this project, recent studies suggest that between 60-80% of rural households run out of food before the annual harvest. Seasonal food insecurity has serious impacts on health and wellbeing....
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Project
Willingness or ability to pay? Expanding electricity access with cost sharing and financing
Lack of access to electricity represents a large impediment to achieving higher income levels. The Government of Uganda has recognised this both in Vision 2040 and the National Development Plan, and set the goal of achieving universal electrification by the year 2040. Energy access goes beyond simply providing the population with access to an energy source. In order to...
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Project
Relaxing seasonal constraints to improve labour productivity: Scaling-up with a private sector partner (country wide project)
In Zambia, small-scale agriculture employs the vast majority of the rural population, despite low levels of productivity and farming income. Most small-scale farms run out of food and cash four to five months after the harvest. Consequently, farmers engage in costly strategies to finance consumption until the next harvest, most commonly selling family labour off-farm in the...
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Project
Relaxing seasonal constraints to improve labour productivity: Scaling-up with a private sector partner
In Zambia, small-scale agriculture employs the vast majority of the rural population, despite low levels of productivity and farming income. Recent studies have demonstrated that small scale farmers are most likely to deviate from their original production plan during the “hungry season” that precedes the harvest. Since harvest occurs once a year, most of these farmers...
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Project
Understanding consumption seasonality in Zambia
Consumption seasonality is prevalent across many poor countries, particularly those with large agricultural sectors. Farmers in these countries typically have abundant food after harvest, but struggle to make it last to the next harvest, resulting in three major implications: Reduction in the number of meals consumed and caloric intake at certain times of the year; ...
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Publication - Policy Brief
The effect of pre-paid electricity metering on the poor: Evidence from Cape Town
Prepaid meters are spreading rapidly in the developing world because they facilitate revenue recovery. A pre-paid meter can be charged using a token with a meter-specific code. Tokens can be purchased from the utility company at points of sale, such as grocery stores. The key difference between pre-paid metering and electricity billing is that electricity can be used...
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Blog post
Pre-paid electricity metering and its effects on the poor
Pre-paid meters for electricity or water are spreading rapidly in the developing world. Households that switched from post-paid monthly bills to pre-paid meters in South Africa, reduced their electricity usage drastically. Given that the energy demand of households is typically relatively unresponsive to prices, the question arises as to where these reductions came from....
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Data Item
Data: Prepaid electricity metering: Costs, benefits and potential for scale-up
The standard approach to recovering the cost of electricity provision is to bill customers monthly for past consumption. If unable to pay, customers face disconnection, the utility loses revenue, and the service provision model is undermined. A possible solution to this problem is prepaid metering, in which customers buy electricity upfront and use it until the prepaid...
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Publication - Project Report
Missing links and mismatches: Data challenges with policy implications
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Publication - Project Report
Environmental quality and economic development in Zambia: Filling the data gaps
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Publications Reader Item
Seeding success: Increasing agricultural technology adoption through information
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Publication - Growth Brief
Seeding success: Increasing agricultural technology adoption through information
Modern agricultural technologies have enormous potential to drive poverty reduction and economic growth, but adoption remains low in many countries. New models of information sharing could help resolve this. With over half of working adults in sub-Saharan Africa employed in agriculture, improving agricultural productivity is an important way to raise living standards. This...
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Project
Willingness or ability to pay? Expanding electricity access with cost sharing and financing
Access to electricity in Uganda remains low, and was estimated to be around 15% in 2012 (UBOS, 2013), with a stark rural-urban divide. Lack of access to electricity represents a large impediment to achieving higher income levels. The Government of Uganda has recognised this both in Vision 2040 and the National Development Plan, and set the goal of achieving universal...
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Project
Paying for power: Prepaid electricity and the spending patterns of the poor
Revenue recovery is a challenge for electricity providers in developing countries. Poor customers often struggle to pay monthly bills, and providers face both cost and political economy barriers to enforcing payment. Increasingly, prepayment is used to solve this problem in the electricity and water sectors. However, little work has been done so far to understand how...
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Publication - Working Paper
Charging ahead: Prepaid electricity metering in South Africa
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Project
Environmental quality and economic development in Zambia: Filling the data gaps
Understanding the effect environmental degradation has on economic development can’t be done without reliable information. Previously in Zambia, the quality and accessibility of environmental data has been low – due in part to the fact that the management of this data was highly decentralised. This project sought to centralise environmental data in Zambia on...
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Project
Household characteristics and the elasticity of demand for water
Survey data indicates that households have low levels of awareness of their marginal water price which undermines the incentives intended in the water tariff structure. Researchers provide selected households with accurate information on the marginal water price they face to measure whether this would elicit a behavioural response and how this response would...
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Project
Prepaid electricity: Better service delivery for the poor?
Study examined the effects of a policy change in 2014 that switched 4,000 households on the grid in Cape Town, South Africa, to prepaid metering. Introducing prepaid meters led to a 13% drop in electricity usage – and the effect persisted throughout the two-year study, suggesting the meters helped customers better understand and take control of their energy...
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Publication - Working Paper
Pay as you go: Pre-paid metering and electricity expenditures in South Africa
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Project
The Leakage and Livelihood Impacts of Payments for Environmental Services
Payments for environmental services, and payments for carbon offsets in particular, are a growing source of public sector expenditures in developing countries. For example, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) recently launched a carbon fund expected to raise 500 million USD for investment in carbon emissions mitigation and sequestration in its member...
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Project
Contract and market design for land-based carbon offsets
Agricultural activities often create environmental externalities that are felt by individuals other than the landholder. A theoretically efficient approach to addressing these externalities involves changing prices to align private and public interests. Governments and international organizations have spent billions of dollars in recent years on incentives for land use...
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Multimedia Item - Audio
Growth Week 2014: Research Session - Agriculture
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Project
Food constraints, yield uncertainty and "Ganyu" labour: A pilot investigation
Small-scale farming remains the most common livelihood strategy and primary source of income in rural Zambia. Limited access to credit and insurance mechanisms leave farmers vulnerable to varying weather and environmental conditions. These yield risks can severely limit farmer’s ability to purchase farming inputs for subsequent seasons and to cover basic food needs for...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Food Constraints, Yield Uncertainty and “Ganyu” Labour: A Pilot Investigation (Policy Brief)
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Publication - Policy Brief
The leakage and livelihood impacts of payments for environmental services (Policy Brief)