Grid electrification should be combined with complementary infrastructure for greater social and economic benefits

Submitted by Petra Hansson on

Key findings:

While electricity is a key to economic development, nearly 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live without electricity.

This study analyses the socioeconomic benefits of electrification in Uganda.

The findings show that grid connectivity increases the number of work hours, female employment, household expenditure (meaning that the household is able to buy more of the goods that it needs), and key educational outcomes. 

Furthermore, the benefits from grid connectivity increase with time.

Energy, Gender

Does access to electricity accelerate home-based business creation in rural Ethiopia?

Submitted by Petra Hansson on

KEY MESSAGES

Most of the businesses in rural areas are home-based, i.e., the household runs businesses such as food sales, restaurants, mobile, and electronics shops, barbering, etc., within their residence. Rural households’ business ownership increased from 17.5% in 2011 to 28.5% in 2016. We found that:

Energy, Policy Design

Response and adaptation of agriculture to climate change: evidence from China

Submitted by Hang Yin on
EfD Authors:

This article aims to identify the mechanism of how climate change affects agriculture through various channels and the mechanism of longer-run adaptation. Using a county-panel dataset spanning the past 35 years, we evaluate the impact of global warming on agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) as well as the impacts on agricultural inputs and outputs in China. Results show that, in the short run, extreme heat has negative effects on China’s agricultural TFP and input utilization, which results in a more negative effect on agricultural output measured by yield.

Agriculture, Climate Change

The effect of export tax rebates on product quality: evidence from China's agricultural product processing industry

Submitted by Hang Yin on
EfD Authors:

This study aims to establish the linkage among export tax rebate (ETR), firm innovation and product quality of Chinese agricultural product processing industry (APPI), so that more targeted policy implications can be discussed.

Using highly disaggregated firm-product-destination-level data through 2001 to 2013 of Chinese APPI, this study employs a two-way fixed effects specification to establish the linkage between ETR and product quality, while the mediational model is adopted to examine potential mechanisms.

Agriculture, Policy Design

Costs of an environmental regulation in livestock farming: Evidence from pig production in rural China

Submitted by Hang Yin on
EfD Authors:

We investigate the cost and benefit of one of the most stringent Chinese environmental regulations that led to a shutdown of a large number of livestock farms. The temporal and spatial variation in programme implementation allows us to employ a staggered difference-in-difference (DID) to identify the causal effects of the regulation. Our DID estimates show that while the regulation significantly reduced NH3-N, it has no significant effect on the other three important livestock related pollutants (pHDO and COD).

Agriculture, Policy Design