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Showing all content in Energy
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Blog post
Don’t shoot the messenger – electricity theft and trust in Karachi, Pakistan
We assume that more information makes markets work better. Information can provide individuals incentives to act better. However, in some situations, information on poor behaviour can lead to mistrust, not just of other people, but of the institution that delivers the message. The Karachi setting Karachi is Pakistan’s largest city and industrial hub, home to 16.6...
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Blog post
Lighting up Rwanda: Assessing the demand for pay-as-you-go lighting
The government of Rwanda has successfully increased the rate of electrification, from 10% in 2010 to 43% in 2018. However, for 57% of the population without electricity, the alternative energy sources include traditional biomass, kerosene, and rechargeable lamps which can harm respiratory health and the environment. In 2017, the Rwandan government launched a universal...
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Publication - Working Paper
Political favoritism and the targeting of power outages
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Project
The political economy of power outages in Ghana: New measures and analysis
Access to energy is crucial for economic growth. While global attention has focused heavily on increasing access, an under-recognised constraint in many countries is poor reliability of electricity supply. This project introduces a new measure of power supply reliability and outages based upon temporal variations in nighttime light output. This work builds upon ongoing...
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Project
Rapid response to Pakistan’s Task Force on Energy Reforms
Pakistan’s power sector is in deep need of reform. The sector suffers from chronic shortages not because of a lack of supply but due to the financial woes of the distribution companies operating throughout Pakistan. Of the electricity sold for use across the country, only 71% is recovered through bills. Such large losses risk collapsing the sector if left...
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Blog post
What do we (not) know about the benefits of households' electrification?
Household electrification has recently become a controversial topic. When The Economist declared that “electricity does not change poor lives as much as was thought,” a number of non-profits and industry representatives wrote indignant responses (CEO of SolarAid, CrossBoundary) arguing that electricity, including distributed solar power, can be a game-changer for rural...
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Blog post
Improving Tanzania’s power quality: Can data help?
For many Tanzanians, the sun sets and it’s pitch black – in fact, according to government data at least two-thirds of Tanzanians don’t have access to electricity. For those who do, many experience problems with reliability and quality of service – i.e. power cuts, and fluctuations in power supply that can damage equipment. This affects people’s daily lives and...
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Data Item
Data: Effects of climate change on low-lying and flood-prone areas: The case of Bangladesh
Exposure to abnormal floods is believed to have negative short- and long-term consequences for welfare and health in poor countries, and such impacts are likely to grow worse with continued anthropogenic climate change. However, two common proxies for flood exposure, self-reported exposure and rainfall, are problematic. This paper describes a method for constructing...
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Data Item
Data: Third-party environmental auditing
In many regulated markets, private, third-party auditors are chosen and paid by the firms that they audit, potentially creating a conflict of interest. This article reports on a two-year field experiment in the Indian state of Gujarat that sought to curb such a conflict by altering the market structure for environmental audits of industrial plants to incentivize accurate...
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Data Item
Data: Gold mining and living standards in Ghanaian households
The development of modern sectors has long been linked to the displacement of traditional agriculture. The economic literature has focused on explanations associated with reallocation of inputs but has neglected other possible mechanisms, such as the negative externalities of environmental pollution on production. To explore this issue, we examine the case of modern gold...