As of late 2008, the steady decline of U.S. crude oil production over the last decades was reversed by the increased adoption of the hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") technology. Adapting the supply-side model proposed by Kaufmann et al. (2004) to assess OPEC’s ability to influence real oil...

The use of well-designed improved cookstoves (ICS) in regions devoid of modern energy yields high private and social returns, mostly related to considerable woodfuel savings. Take-up rates are nonetheless often very low when people have to pay costcovering prices. This paper presents main...

The investment requirements to achieve the United Nations’ universal electricity access goal by 2030 are estimated at 640 billion US Dollars. The assumption underlying this goal is that electrification contributes to poverty alleviation in many regards. In recent years, a body of literature...

The United Nations’ objective to provide electricity to the 1.3 billion people without access in developing countries comes at high costs. Little evidence exists on socioeconomic impacts of electrification. This paper rigorously investigates effects of a large grid extension program in Rwanda...

More than 1.3 billion people in developing countries are lacking access to electricity. Based on the assumption that electricity is a prerequisite for human development, the United Nations initiative Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) has proclaimed the goal of providing modern energy to all by...

Drawing on the 2009 and 2017 waves of the National Household Transportation Survey, this paper models the determinants of vehicle miles traveled, with the aim of parameterizing the magnitude of the fuel price elasticity. To capture changes in this magnitude over the two years of the survey, our...

Using household travel diary data collected in Germany between 1997 and 2012, we employ an instrumental variable (IV) approach to estimate fuel price and efficiency elasticities. The aim is to gauge the relative impacts of fuel economy standards and fuel taxes on distance traveled. We find that...

The seminal studies by Allcott and Mullainathan (2010), Allcott (2011), and Allcott and Rogers (2014) suggest that social comparison-based home energy reports (HER) are a cost-effective non-price intervention to stimulate energy conservation. The present paper demonstrates the context-dependency...

Off-grid solar electric power is a promising technology for remote regions in rural Africa where expansion of the electricity grids is prohibitively expensive. Using household data from a target region of an off-grid solar promotion program in Burkina Faso, this paper explores the role of...

This paper reinvestigates the influence of oil price uncertainty on real economic activity in the U.S. using a four-variable VAR, GARCH-in-mean, asymmetric BEKK model. In contrast to previous studies in this area, the analysis focuses on business cycle fluctuations and we control for global...