Improving electricity access in low-income countries is a challenging problem because of the high costs of grid extension and low demand for grid electricity in rural areas. This study elucidates these constraints by analyzing poor households' willingness-to-pay for different types of...

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of electricity pricing practices and tariff structure design in more than 60 developed and developing countries worldwide as of 2015-16. It evaluates the performance of electricity tariff designs according to a variety of important dimensions, notably...

This study proposes a novel supply-side mechanism driving economic structural transformation: grid electrification. Increasing electricity availability affects the reallocation of inputs to more productive activities through generating higher returns and lowering entry costs in sectors with...

Entrepreneurs in developing countries report that unreliable electricity imposes a serious constraint, yet little evidence exists on how blackouts impact the micro firms that account for the majority of employment. This paper estimates the effects of outages on small firms using original...

The North Eastern Region (NER) of India stretches across the eastern foothills of the Himalayan mountain range. Geographically, the region is connected to the other parts of the country through a small 'chicken neck' corridor in the state of West Bengal. With a total population of 45.6 million...

This paper estimates the welfare impact of rural electrification in India using nationally representative household panel survey data for 2005 and 2012. Analysis based on a propensity-score-weighted fixed-effects model finds that while electrification is associated with a broad range of social...

The State of Electricity Access Report, 2017, aims to prompt governments, donors, the private sector, civil society organizations, and practitioners to develop interventions to close the electricity access gap by integrating lessons learned with insights drawn from emerging innovative business...

Over the past 15 years, Ethiopia has focused on raising electrification rates, mainly by extending the national grid system to more villages and towns. The World Bank funded Electricity Access Rural Expansion Project (Phase 2) was implemented since 2007 to assist the Government of Ethiopia (GoE)...