Essays on Development Economics and Energy Access

This thesis makes contributions to provide the microeconomic evidence on the effects of electricity provision and on the feasibility of electricity provision via renewable energy in developing countries. Three selected topics are presented. First, we discuss how the impact of national electricity grid provision affects household welfare and individual labor activities in Vietnam. To overcome the endogeneity problem of infrastructure provision, the slope of the terrain is used as the instrumental variable. We present both first-difference regression and pooled regression results using household survey data and geographic datasets. The effect of electrification on female labor supply is negative, contrary to the evidence suggested in the previous literature. Second, we measure willingness to pay for solar lanterns among the poor rural households in India using the Becker-DeGrook-Marschak method. We conduct field surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of providing a trial period and postponed payment scheme to promote sales. Results show that willingness to pay for the solar product among the consumers is low. Lastly, we report patterns of awareness and interest in solar home systems (SHS) among the poor rural households in India. Results show that willingness to pay for SHS is low, even if the national subsidy is taken into account. Moreover, households that have experience using grid electricity have greater willingness to pay for SHS.