Across diverse geographies, mini-grids have been employed to provide energy access to off-grid and rural communities. In India, amid the government push to expand grid infrastructure, concerns have been raised about the viability of mini-grid business models that are largely run by private...

Rural electrification has advanced rapidly in many developing countries. Under conditions of poverty and weak infrastructure, however, households face a risk of backsliding. Here we use two rounds from the ACCESS survey of rural households in six northern Indian states to explore factors that...

The literature on sustainable energy technology sees informational barriers as a major obstacle to technology adoption. In the case of solar home systems, recent studies report positive socio-economic effects on households, but technology adoption remains underwhelming. In collaboration with a...

Coalitions led by the president play an important role in the Brazilian legislature, but what do members of the president's coalition gain from joining? We conduct a regression discontinuity analysis of discretionary, politically motivated federal transfers to Brazilian municipalities. Our...

The International Energy Agency estimates that more than a billion people remain without household electricity access. However, countries such as India have recently made major progress in rural electrification. Who has benefited from these achievements? We focus on 714 villages in six...

Subjective satisfaction is a central element of technology adoption, but scholars have not analyzed the determinants of households' satisfaction with their cooking arrangements. Drawing on an original survey of 8,568 households across six Indian states, we uncover the predictors of such...

This paper investigates the perspectives of commercial and industrial consumers on electricity pricing reform in Uttar Pradesh, India. In a first study of its kind, we report results from semi-structured, in-depth interviews that were conducted with a variety of firms, based on their electricity...

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...

A reliable supply of electricity is essential for economic development, and developing countries across the world have implemented reforms to improve their power sector performance. We publish a dataset of power sector reforms in 142 developing countries from 1982 to 2013 and use the data to...

The World Bank's Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy (RISE) scorecard evaluates countries' sustainable energy policies against global 'best practices.' Here I demonstrate that many of these so-called best practices are inappropriate in the context of limited state capacity. Using...