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...

To reach the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of universal household electrification by 2030, developing countries are spending billions of dollars to expand access. India, for example, recently undertook an audacious expansion plan which aimed to electrify every household by December...

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...

In the developing world, households often stack multiple fuels. In the case of India, they use both kerosene and electricity for lighting while cooking with both LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) and traditional biomass. Existing scholarship on fuel stacking largely relies on small surveys and does...

A common argument for the lack of economic reform in developing countries is popular opposition. If current economic policies are dysfunctional, could information about alternatives sway the voters? We examine if a simple argument emphasizing the need to increase electricity prices for improved...

Electricity is the most commonly used form of energy for artificial lighting in modern society. Despite a rapid growth in the rate of electrification, 9% of electrified Indian households in our six sampled states continued to use kerosene as their primary lighting fuel in 2018. This appears as a...

How beneficial is basic energy access – typically lighting and mobile charging – for rural households? Despite research on the economic impacts of basic energy access, few studies have investigated how it changes household behavior. Here we report results from a randomized controlled trial...

Clean cooking fuels promise substantial health benefits for rural households, but almost three billion people continue to rely on traditional biomass for their cooking needs. We explore the role of gender in the adoption of LPG, a clean cooking fuel, in rural India. Given that women are...