Rural electrification is believed to contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) via various channels. In this paper, we investigate the impacts of electrification on the household's lighting usage, home studying, energy expenditures and income. We use household data...

Electrification is frequently said to foster women's development and contribute to a modernization of gender roles. Using Demographic and Health Survey data from rural areas in 22 Sub-Saharan countries collected between 1999 and 2014, this paper examines the role of electricity access in...

Extending the power grid into hitherto unconnected areas is high on the policy agenda in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, connection rates and electricity consumption remain low in grid connected areas, at least in the short and medium run. This paper provides a long-term follow-up on an evaluation of a...

The shale gas revolution in the United States induced an unprecedented commodity boom across northwestern India. Leveraging population-based discontinuities in the contemporaneous roll-out of India's national rural electrification scheme, we show that access to electricity increased total...

This paper revisits the instrumental variable (IV) approach in Lipscomb et al. (2013, 2021, LMB) to study the impacts of electrification. We first make corrections to the construction of the dataset, including the modelled IV. Revised estimates on main outcomes and mechanisms are statistically...

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 on...

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...

Rural electrification is believed to contribute to the achievement of the MDG. In this paper, we investigate electrification impacts on different indicators. We use household data that we collected in Rwanda in villages with and without electricity access. We account for self-selection and...

Providing access to electricity is widely considered as a precondition for socio-economic development in rural areas of developing countries. While electrification interventions are often expected to reduce poverty through productive uses for income generating purposes, the reality in rural...

This paper reviews the book 'Infrastructure and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa' by Antonio Estache and Quentin Wodon. The authors summarize the political debate on infrastructure policy in Africa in a very compelling and knowledgeable way and make a convincing case for pro-poor subsidies. Yet,...