Quality of electricity service remains poor in many developing countries. Here we examine factors that influence stated willingness to pay for better service (i.e., more hours of power per day) among rural and urban households in Uttar Pradesh, India. Besides suggesting that low willingness to...

Even after two decades of structural reforms, the pre-existing power dynamics constrain the electricity regulator from enforcing discom;s compliance, as they flout performance standards on electrification, supply quality and revenue recovery. This paper investigates this and the influence that...

As both China and India are moving away from coal in the power sector, Southeast Asia has emerged as arguably the most important region for future growth in coal-fired power generation. Here we use data from the January 2017 edition of the Global Coal Plant Tracker to understand coal's fortunes...

Despite the growing use of impact evaluations for electrification interventions, little attention has been paid to the geographical distribution of such evaluations. This is concerning because cultural and regional differences may limit how transferable results across regions are. We undertake a...

When and why do individual companies lobby on environmental policies? Given the structural strength of business interests, the answer to this question is important for explaining policy. However, evidence on the strategic lobbying behavior of individual companies remains scarce. We use data from...

Development economists frequently emphasize the importance of good infrastructure for economic growth. Can governments attract private capital in infrastructural investments through policy reform? We address this question by showing that, in the case of electricity generation, a simple...

I propose that vouchers offer a promising approach to making distributed power generation, such as solar home systems, affordable to consumers and profitable for producers and distributors. In a voucher-based system, governments give vouchers to eligible beneficiaries, who then use the vouchers...

A reliable supply of electricity is essential for economic development, and developing countries across the world have implemented reforms to improve their power sector performance. We publish a dataset of power sector reforms in 142 developing countries from 1982 to 2013 and use the data to...

As the cost of distributed power generation continues to decrease, technologies such as solar home systems and micro-grids become increasingly attractive in the quest for energy access. Here we show, however, that national rural electrification planning mostly continues to ignore distributed...