Replication and constructive controversy are essential for scientific progress. This paper reviews the impact of all replications published as comments in the American Economic Review between 2010 and 2020. We investigate the citation rates of comments and whether a comment affects its original...

Reanalyses of empirical studies and replications in new contexts are important for scientific progress. Journals in economics increasingly require authors to provide data and code alongside published papers, but how much does the economics profession indeed replicate? This paper summarizes...

High hopes are pinned to mini-grids for rural electrification, especially in remote and sparsely populated areas. This note presents new evidence from a large evaluation of a US Millennium Challenge Corporation investment into mini-grids in Indonesia. We find that, a few years after...

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...

Energy-efficient biomass cookstoves (EEBC) are an important technology for the three billion people relying on firewood and charcoal for cooking in the Global South. This paper assesses the price-responsiveness of demand for EEBC and the role of information about health and economic benefits....

The toolkit of the so-called credibility revolution dominates empirical economics, with its promise of causal identification to improve scientific knowledge and ultimately policy. By examining the case of rural electrification in the Global South, this opinion paper exposes the limits of this...

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...

Claims for removing fossil fuel subsidies in the Global South are based on climate and equity concerns, but they can be at odds with improving access to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) as a clean cooking fuel. We examine the case of urban Senegal where LPG usage rates were among the highest in...

While results from individual Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) often do not hold beyond their setting, the accumulation of many RCTs can be used to guide policy. But how many studies are required to confidently generalize? Our paper examines construct validity, an often neglected yet...

Diffusion of technology that improves welfare is a global policy priority. We study the market for energyefficient biomass cookstoves in rural Senegal. Our surveys cover stove producers and intermediary vendors on the supply side and also elicit demand from rural households using real-purchase...