Quality of electricity service remains poor in many developing countries. Here we examine factors that influence stated willingness to pay for better service (i.e., more hours of power per day) among rural and urban households in Uttar Pradesh, India. Besides suggesting that low willingness to...

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 rural electrification has been a high priority for many governments in the developing world, the factors that make individual households more likely to pay for a connection have received insufficient attention. In particular, many studies have dealt with the role of affordability of grid...

How can demand for electricity be estimated without fine-grained usage data? Employing an original and large dataset, we develop a novel method for determining drivers of demand without electricity meter data. We first segment Indian consumers by their willingness to pay for electricity service,...

Sectoral interests play an important role in distributive politics, but their influence is difficult to measure. We compare the effect of international oil prices on subsidies for domestic gasoline and diesel consumption. Because diesel is used by a smaller number of organized agricultural and...

Even as India pursues universal electricity access, household electricity demand remains poorly understood. While studies have investigated residential electricity consumption, most focus on urban consumers, even though a majority of the newly electrified households are in rural areas. Using...