This paper documents the prevalence of in-house generation of electric power by firms in Sub-Saharan Africa and attempts to identify the underlying causes. The analysis is based on two data sources. The UDI World Electric Power Plants Data Base (WEPP), a global inventory of electric power...

The productivity of the world's natural resources is critically dependent on a variety of highly uncertain factors, which obscure individual investors and governments that seek to make long-term, sometimes irreversible investments in their exploration and utilization. These dynamic...

This study proposes a novel supply-side mechanism driving economic structural transformation: grid electrification. Increasing electricity availability affects the reallocation of inputs to more productive activities through generating higher returns and lowering entry costs in sectors with...

This study uses a contingent valuation approach to value the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for improved service experienced by households in Nepal following the end of the country's load-shedding crisis of 2008-2016. Using a detailed survey of grid-connected Nepali households, the authors calculate...

This study takes advantage of a publicly salient policy sphere - road quality - in the Russian Federation's capital city to explore the use of digital technologies as means of aggregating information and demonstrating government capacity and effectiveness. It focuses on the potential linkage...

This study surveys one of the critical welfare aspects of contemplating climate policies in developing countries and their potential effect on workers and labor markets. The existing body of evidence finds that climate policies will likely cause a significant reduction of jobs in fossil-fuel...

This study develops and structurally estimates a model of household and electric utility behavior to describe how the low access rates and high connection charges that are common in the Sub-Saharan Africa region arise from regulated electricity tariffs being set too low. As a result, the...

Nepal suffered with severe shortage of electricity supply or load shedding in the last decade. Electricity load shedding is considered one of the major barriers to the country's economic development. This study uses a computable general equilibrium model to estimate the economic costs of...

Improving electricity access in low-income countries is a challenging problem because of the high costs of grid extension and low demand for grid electricity in rural areas. This study elucidates these constraints by analyzing poor households' willingness-to-pay for different types of...

Collateral can increase access to finance, especially for small firms, and lead to better terms for loan contracts. Many argue that firms are excluded from formal credit markets because they lack assets that can serve as collateral. In fact, firms generally have a wide array of productive assets...