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...

Considerable work has been done to understand and improve the resilience of individual infrastructure components. However, systems of components, or even systems of systems, are far less well understood. Cascade effects, where the loss of one infrastructure affects others, is a major source of...

Resilience against infrastructure failure is essential for ensuring the health and safety of communities during and following natural hazard situations. Understanding how natural hazards impact society in terms of economic cost, recovery time, and damages to critical infrastructure is essential...

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...

This study develops and structurally estimates a model of household and electric utility behavior to describe how the low access rates and high connection charges that are common in the Sub-Saharan Africa region arise from regulated electricity tariffs being set too low. As a result, the...

This paper provides evidence on how the provision of social infrastructure, such as reliable electricity, can be leveraged to increase taxation in developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. First, using comprehensive data from the latest round of the Afrobarometer survey, the...

This paper presents evidence on how the provision of unreliable electricity constrains expansion in the productive sectors of the economy, consequently leading to a reduction in the number of employment opportunities in Africa. Using geodata on electricity transmission networks on the continent,...

Infrastructure is viewed as a crucial ingredient to foster growth and productivity. Amid the post-global financial crisis slowdown, Sub-Saharan Africa is in dire need to continue the growth momentum it experienced during the period of the Africa Rising narrative. An emerging consensus in the...

Nepal suffered with severe shortage of electricity supply or load shedding in the last decade. Electricity load shedding is considered one of the major barriers to the country's economic development. This study uses a computable general equilibrium model to estimate the economic costs of...