Appliance Adoption in Recently Electrified Rural Indian Villages

Appliance Adoption in Recently Electrified Rural Indian Villages

by Meredith Fowlie (Department of agricultural and Resource Economics, UC Berkeley) and Catherine Wolfram (Berkeley Haas)

See the USAID report on this project.

Nearly all of the growth in energy demand, fossil fuel use, associated local pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions is forecast to come from the developing world, yet we know very little about how energy is used in developing countries. The Berkeley professors doing this project are involved with a Berkeley-based startup, Gram Power, which provides solar power to rural villages in India using a smart microgrid technology that includes prepaid smart meters and grid monitoring devices. Because the provider is using smart meters and because and the team includes engineers, it is possible to analyze minute-by-minute electricity usage and infer the type of appliance the household is using at the time .The project will fund appliances (e.g., light bulbs) to the newly connected households. Households will be randomly selected to receive either a low efficiency version (e.g., compact fluorescent) or a high efficiency version (e.g., LED). The project will analyze households’ decisions about how much to use the different appliances. If households randomly selected to receive the high efficiency versions use them for more hours per week, this would be concrete, experimentally derived evidence of a rebound effect. Debates about how large the rebound effect is likely to be are central to policy discussions about the role of energy efficiency in mitigating climate change. To date, there is very little empirical evidence on the rebound effect, and none from the developing world.

Photo source: https://flic.kr/p/Deit6

 

Topics

Development

Initiatives

International Trade & Development

Cross-Border Acquisitions and Labor Regulations

Cross-Border Acquisitions and Labor Regulations

by Ross Levine, Chen Lin and Beibei Shen

For draft of the paper, see here.

Do labor regulations influence the reaction of stock markets and firm profitability to cross-border acquisitions? Levine, Lin and Shen discover that acquiring firms enjoy smaller abnormal stock returns and profits when target firms are in countries with stronger labor protection regulations, i.e., in countries where laws, regulations, and policies increase the costs to firms of adjusting their workforces. These effects are especially pronounced when the target firm is in a labor-intensive or high labor-volatility industry. Consistent with labor regulations shaping the success of cross-border deals, Levine, Lin and Shen find that firms make fewer and smaller cross-border acquisitions into countries with strong labor regulations.

See poster.

Topics

Capital flows

Initiatives

Financial Globalization

Peer Effects in the Demand for Energy in Mexico

Peer Effects in the Demand for Energy in Mexico

by Lucas Davis (Berkeley- Haas)

From 2009–2012, Mexico implemented a national energy-efficiency program that replaced 1.9 million aging refrigerators and air conditioners with modern, efficient models.  This research will study whether participation in the program by a neighbor made households more likely to participate or otherwise reduce their electricity usage.  Peer effects in energy-efficiency decisions are potentially very important, yet there are no credible empirical estimates of their presence or magnitude.  Mexico’s appliance replacement program is an ideal setting for evaluating these types of peer effects.  It was conducted at a huge scale, making it particularly worthy of careful evaluation.  Though exceptional in size, its design is typical of energy-efficiency programs in many countries, so findings may be of broad interest.  Because participation was limited to households with historic monthly electricity consumption above a set threshold, this project can compare the neighbors of households who were barely eligible to the neighbors of households who were barely ineligible. This allows for highly credible and transparent measurement of peer effects. Preliminary evidence finds substantial peer effects concentrated within 1-2 months from the time of participation. The timing and size of the effect suggest that program awareness may be particiularly important in affecting energy-efficiency program participation.

Topics

Development

Initiatives

International Trade & Development

Stability or Upheaval? The Currency Composition of International Reserves in the Long Run

Stability or Upheaval? The Currency Composition of International Reserves in the Long Run

by Barry Eichengreen, Livia Chitu & Arnaud Mehl

STABILITY OR UPHEAVAL?

This project analyzes how the role of different national currencies as international reserves was affected by the shift from fixed to flexible exchange rates. The authors extend data on the currency composition of foreign reserves backward and forward to investigate whether there was a shift in the determinants of the currency composition of international reserves around the breakdown of Bretton Woods. They find that inertia and policy-credibility effects in international reserve currency choice have become stronger post-Bretton Woods, while network effects appear to have weakened. They show that negative policy interventions designed to discourage international use of currency have been more effective than positive interventions to encourage its use. These findings speak to the prospects of currencies like the euro and the renminbi seeking to acquire international reserve status and others like the U.S. dollar seeking to preserve it.

 

See poster.

Topics

Architecture

Initiatives

International Financial Architecture

Does Peer Use Influence Adoption of Efficient Cookstoves? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial in Uganda

Does Peer Use Influence Adoption of Efficient Cookstoves? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial in Uganda

by David Levine (Berkeley Haas)

Link to paper

This paper examines the effect of peer usage on consumer demand for efficient cookstoves with a randomized controlled trial in rural Uganda. It test if the neighbors of buyers who ordered and received a stove are more likely to purchase an efficient cookstove than the neighbors of buyers who ordered but have not yet received a stove. The paper finds that neighbors of buyers who have experience with the stove are not detectably more likely to purchase a stove than neighbors of buyers who have not yet received their stove. It does find evidence of peer effects in opinions about efficient cookstoves. Knowing that a prominent member of the community has the efficient stove predicts 17–22 percentage points higher odds of strongly favoring the stove. But this more favorable opinion seemingly has no impact on purchase decisions.

The paper, with Andrew Simons, Theresa Beltramo and Garrick Blalock, is forthcomingin  Health Communications, 20, 2015: 55–66.

Photo source: https://flic.kr/p/6CKP1J

Topics

Development

Initiatives

International Trade & Development