We provide evidence that motorists respond to short-run fluctuations in fuel prices at the gas pump and not on the road. Employing variants of censored panel regression to control for unobserved heterogeneity and censoring of the dependent variable, we find that the fuel price has a large and...

The demand for motor fuel should decline when its price rises, but how exactly does that happen? Do people drive less, do they drive more carefully to conserve fuel, or do they do both? To answer these questions, we use data from the German Mobility Panel from 2004 to 2019, taking advantage of...

We explore whether non-competitive pricing prevails in Germany’s retail gasoline market by examining the influence of the crude oil price on the retail gasoline price, focusing specifically on how this influence varies according to the brand and to the degree of competition in the vicinity of...

Today more than 2.7 billion people rely on biomass as their primary cooking fuel, with profound implications for the environment and people's well-being. Wood provision is often time-consuming and the emitted smoke has severe health effects - both burdens that afflict women in particular. The...

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...

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...

The use of well-designed improved cookstoves (ICS) in regions devoid of modern energy yields high private and social returns, mostly related to considerable woodfuel savings. Take-up rates are nonetheless often very low when people have to pay costcovering prices. This paper presents main...

Off-grid solar electric power is a promising technology for remote regions in rural Africa where expansion of the electricity grids is prohibitively expensive. Using household data from a target region of an off-grid solar promotion program in Burkina Faso, this paper explores the role of...

With 2.7 billion people relying on woodfuels for cooking in developing countries, the dissemination of improved cooking stoves (ICS) is frequently considered an effective instrument to combat deforestation particularly in arid countries. This paper evaluates the impacts of an ICS dissemination...

Solar off -grid technologies have become a lower-cost alternative to grid-based electrification in rural Africa. As a contribution to the United Nations’ electricity for all goals, policy currently promotes branded solar products based on the assumption that high-quality standards are...