"The paper analyzes 141 villages in Matlab, Bangladesh from 1974 to 1996, in which half the villages received from 1977 to 1996 a door-to-door outreach family planning and maternal-child health program. Village and individual data confirm a decline in fertility of about 15 percent in the program...

As is now well documented, aid is given for both political as well as economic reasons. The conventional wisdom is that politically-motivated aid is less effective in promoting developmental objectives. We examine the ex-post performance ratings of World Bank projects and generally find that...

We develop a model of regulation of service-delivery NGOs, where future grants are conditional on prior spending of some minimal proportion of current revenue on direct project-related expenses. Such regulation induces some NGOs to increase current project spending, but imposes wasteful costs of...

This paper evaluates the effect of development project aid from the World Bank and China on firms' sales growth, using a large dataset of 110864 firms spanning 121 countries between 2001 and 2016. We find that, contrary to the World Bank, Chinese ODA projects increase, on average, firm sales...

Using the 2012-2018 waves of the China Family Panel Studies, we investigate the impact of energy poverty (EP) on subjective well-being (SWB) among Chinese adults aged 18 and over. In addition to documenting EP rates in the range of 13.2% to 35.3% (dependent on measurement used), we show that EP...

We use data from China Family Panel Studies to examine the effects of being a child or adolescent in China's Great Famine on the likelihood of being in energy poverty in adulthood. We find that a one unit increase in the intensity of the Famine, measured by the number of excess deaths per 100...

This paper examines how the price of home heating affects mortality in the US. Exposure to cold is one reason that mortality peaks in winter, and a higher heating price increases exposure to cold by reducing heating use. It also raises energy bills, which could affect health by decreasing other...

We use the 2012-2018 China Family Panel Studies data to examine the relationship between household energy poverty and an individual’s probability of becoming an entrepreneur. Consistent with the theory of underdog entrepreneurship that negative personal circumstances can foster self-reliance,...

Using the 2012-2018 waves of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we investigate the impact of energy poverty (EP) on health care expenditures among Chinese adults aged 18+. Employing a methodology combining a random effects two-part model and instrumental variable estimations, we show that EP...

In the wake of the global energy crisis, many European countries used energy price controls to fight inflation and to stabilize the economy. Despite its wide adoption, many economists remained skeptical. In this paper, we argue that price controls should be part of the policy toolbox to respond...