Providing clean water requires maintenance, as well as the initial connections that are typically measured. Frequently, the water supply fails in the developing world, especially when users don't pay the marginal cost of water. This paper uses the timing of frequent, unexpected water service...

In the half century since the founding of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, public and private U.S. sources have spent nearly $5 trillion ($2017) to provide clean rivers, lakes, and drinking water, or annual spending of 0.8 percent of U.S. GDP in most years. Yet over half of rivers and...

The Clean Water Act (CWA) significantly improved surface water quality, but at a cost exceeding the estimated benefits. We quantify the effect of the CWA on a direct measure of health. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we compare birth weight upstream and downstream from wastewater...

This paper has two objectives. First, we identify a problem with the ability of the discrete-continuous choice (DCC) framework and conditional demand functions to fully describe consumer preferences in the presence of kinked budget constraints. Second, we propose and illustrate an alternative,...

The Millennium Development Goals call for reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. This goal was adopted in large part because clean water was seen as critical to fighting diarrheal disease, which kills 2 million children annually. There is...

Localities in developed countries often restrict construction and population growth through regulations governing land usage, lot sizes, building heights, and frontage requirements. In developing countries, such policies are less effective because of the existence of unregulated, informal...

Behavioral constraints may explain part of low demand for preventive health products. We test the effects of two light-touch psychological interventions on water chlorination and related health and economic outcomes using a randomized controlled trial among 3750 women in rural Kenya. One...

We explore Tinbergen's fundamental insight that policymakers need at least as many policy instruments as targets. We extend this idea using a large natural field experiment in water resource management. We use social comparisons and loss-framed messages to help achieve two goals of our partner...

Historically, improvements in municipal water quality reduced mortality substantially in wealthy countries. However, water disinfection has not produced equivalent benefits in developing countries today. We investigate this puzzle by analyzing a large-scale municipal water disinfection program...