Rural electrification has progressed unevenly across the world since 1945, with some rural communities gaining access to power decades earlier than others. We examine the association between early electrification and the quality of electricity service to households, testing the hypothesis that...

Liquified petroleum gas (LPG) is an important clean fuel alternative for households that rely on burning biomass for daily cooking needs. In India, Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) has provided poor households with LPG connections since 2016. We investigate cooking fuel use in households to...

Does political alignment at different levels of government influence centralized bureaucratic processes? Environmental clearances are important regulatory tools that allow governments to target the distribution of public goods/bads by both controlling negative externalities and allocating rents...

Air pollution poses a serious problem to the public health, but governments have few incentives to implement costly pollution mitigation policy without the public support. We examine the current state of research on public opinion about air pollution by reviewing the three largest journal...

In many developing countries, theft remains a significant obstacle to ensuring proper public service provision and access. We argue that social acceptability of theft constitutes an understudied barrier to curbing power theft. Using a conjoint experiment, we study perceptions of theft in the...

While energy poverty is a particularly large problem in rural areas, rapid urbanization in developing countries is also raising concerns about energy access in urban areas. How can policymakers improve energy access for the urban poor? We address this question by investigating the use of solar...

What explains variation in the energy-related climate policies that nations implement? In this paper we present a theory of energy-related climate policy in democratic countries, emphasizing the distributional effects of policies on important energy-related industries, public sentiment, and the...