What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper assembles a set of 13...

This paper presents the three-year impacts of an improved biomass cookstove on child and adult health in rural Ethiopia. After near complete stove adoption during an initial one-year randomized controlled trial, 60 percent of treatment households continued to use the improved stoves three-years...

There is a growing effort in the non-market valuation literature toward better understanding of the stability and evolution of preferences over time. The study uses a novel approach combining a repeated choice experiment with a randomized controlled trial on stove adoption in Ethiopia to analyze...

This study uses a computable general equilibrium model to analyze various policy scenarios for a carbon tax on greenhouse gas emissions from petroleum fuels and kerosene in Ethiopia. The carbon tax starts at $5 per ton of carbon dioxide in 2018 and rises to $30 per ton in 2030. Different...

This paper investigates household preferences for improved cook stoves using a choice experiment administered in rural Ethiopia, and the cost-effectiveness of an improved stove for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. In Ethiopia, about 96 percent of household energy demand is fulfilled by...

The paper discusses challenges in analyzing the costs of household cooking methods (fuels and associated stove technologies) in lower-income countries, and sources of divergence between observed and true social costs. The challenges in assessing social costs include valuation of household time,...

Improving the resilience of the economy in the face of uncertain climate change damages involves irreversible investments to scale up new technologies that are less vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The benefit of having such options includes the avoided welfare cost of diverting...

This paper provides field experiment–based evidence on the potential additional forest carbon sequestration that cleaner and more fuel-efficient cookstoves might generate. The paper focuses on the Mirt (meaning “best”) cookstove, which is used to bake injera, the staple food in Ethiopia....

The South Asia region is lagging behind many regions in the world in regional electricity cooperation and trading, despite the huge anticipated benefits. This study uses an electricity planning model that produces optimal expansion of electricity generation capacities and transmission...

South Asian countries, facing challenges in efficiently meeting growing electricity demand, can benefit from increased cross-border electricity cooperation and trade by harnessing complementarities in electricity demand patterns, diversity in resource endowments for power generation, and gains...