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Essays in Energy Economics
Essays in Energy Economics
상세정보
- 자료유형
- 학위논문 서양
- 최종처리일시
- 20260202103529
- ISBN
- 9798288863837
- DDC
- 621
- 서명/저자
- Essays in Energy Economics
- 발행사항
- [Sl] : University of California, Berkeley, 2025
- 발행사항
- Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2025
- 형태사항
- 254 p
- 주기사항
- Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-01, Section: A.
- 주기사항
- Advisor: Ligon, Ethan.
- 학위논문주기
- Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2025.
- 초록/해제
- 요약This dissertation draws on large administrative datasets from Senegal and employs both causal inference techniques and structural quantitative models to quantify the welfare impacts of key features of electricity markets in low-income countries: unreliable grid supply, uneven adoption of new metering technologies, and electricity theft.The first chapter of the dissertation focuses on electricity reliability and is motivated by two stylized facts: 1) governments and donors invest heavily in expanding access to electricity in low-income countries, and 2) recent studies document small impacts of access to grid electricity on consumer welfare in several low-income countries. In this chapter, I provide new evidence on the impact of grid reliability on the willingness to pay (WTP) for grid electricity based on large-scale reliability improvement projects in Senegal's electricity supply network. I use high-frequency geocoded administrative data on outages, customer-level bills covering the universe of electricity users, and rich geocoded data on the economic activities of households and firms to conduct two analyses. First, I estimate the causal effect of improved reliability on consumers through a difference-in-differences approach that leverages the variation in the timing of reliability projects. I find that these projects reduced outage duration by 40%, increased electricity consumption by 8%, and led to greater appliance ownership, a reallocation of time away from household chores to wage labor, and lower disconnection rates. Second, I estimate a quantitative demand model and a random-coefficient discrete choice model of energy sources. I find that reliability projects increase the WTP for an additional hour of grid electricity by 10%, from an average of $0.20. This increase varies over peak and off-peak hours and differs significantly across customer types (firms versus households) and by establishment size (small versus large). This finding corresponds to an internal rate of return for reliability projects exceeding 30%. My findings suggest that reliability improvements can significantly increase the value of grid electricity, even in contexts where baseline reliability and the WTP for grid electricity are low.The second chapter quantifies the role of switching costs in the under-adoption of prepaid electricity meters in Senegal, despite their clear monetary benefits. Using the universe of monthly billing data from 2012 to 2024, I first show that switching to prepaid meters leads to a significant reduction in electricity consumption relative to remaining on postpaid meters. This reflects two monetary incentives: prepaid meters offer a cheaper tariff schedule and promote lower consumption through their pay-as-you-go structure. To understand why many customers fail to switch despite these potential gains, I develop and estimate a three-stage dynamic discrete choice model of voluntary prepaid adoption. In the model, customers decide whether to request a switch, utilities decide whether to offer one, and customers then accept or reject the offer. The model captures key frictions: switching costs, transaction costs, information frictions, and payment enforcement. I estimate the model using distance-based instruments and calibrate it to match moments in the billing data. Using the estimated parameters, I simulate counterfactual adoption under three policy scenarios (voluntary adoption, universal prepaid, and forced switching of non-payers) across four environments: with and without tariff differentials, transaction costs, and switching costs. I find that prepaid meters generate larger monetary gains for poorer customers, but these customers are less likely to adopt. The primary reason is switching costs: they explain 15-20% of under-adoption among small residential and commercial users-those with the highest monetary gains-but only 2-3% among large users. Transaction costs, information frictions, and enforcement risk play marginal roles. These results highlight that voluntary adoption may fail to reach customers with the largest potential benefits if they face high switching costs. As a result, policies relying solely on voluntary uptake may be ineffective or even welfare-reducing for the most constrained consumers.The third chapter studies electricity fraud, an issue faced by utility providers in low-income countries. Using a uniquely rich dataset that links the universe of customer-level theft incidents to disaggregated billing records from 2012 to 2024, I quantify how theft behavior varies across customer types and how it responds to electricity price changes. I begin by characterizing the demographic and behavioral profiles of theft-prone customers. Theft is more common among older, long-tenured residential clients living in free-standing homes with few appliances and repeated disconnections, suggesting that necessity, familiarity with the system, and weak enforcement contribute to sustained illicit behavior. Next, I estimate the impact of price changes on theft behavior using a difference-in-differences framework. The identification strategy leverages quasi-experimental variation from administrative reclassification of customers into different tariff categories, which result in quasi-exogenous changes to their average and marginal prices. I document that these reclassified customers experience a 7-10% price drop, accompanied by a 1.5-2 percentage point decline in recorded theft incidence. Given a baseline theft incidence of 1-2%, this implies a theft elasticity with respect to price in the range of +1.5 to +1.7. This suggests that even modest reductions in price can induce sizable declines in fraud among consumers at the margin of tariff reclassification. These findings demonstrate that electricity theft is not only a function of enforcement failures or behavioral norms, but is also highly sensitive to price structure. The results underscore the importance of accounting for consumer-level incentives when designing tariff policy, and suggest that price reforms can serve as effective tools in theft mitigation strategies-especially when targeted at customers for whom affordability is a binding constraint.Taken together, these three chapters show how pricing, behavioral frictions, and enforcement shape electricity access and consumption in low-income countries. The analysis uncovers key demand-side constraints that influence the effectiveness of pricing reforms, technology adoption, and anti-theft efforts. The findings highlight the importance of aligning tariff structures, metering strategies, and enforcement policies with consumer behavior. In doing so, this work contributes to the design of electricity markets towards economic efficiency.
- 일반주제명
- Energy
- 키워드
- Prepaid meters
- 키워드
- Reliability
- 키워드
- Senegal
- 키워드
- Tariff schedule
- 기타저자
- University of California, Berkeley Agricultural & Resource Economics
- 기본자료저록
- Dissertations Abstracts International. 87-01A.
- 전자적 위치 및 접속
- 로그인 후 원문을 볼 수 있습니다.
MARC
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■020 ▼a9798288863837
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■040 ▼aMiAaPQ▼cMiAaPQ
■0820 ▼a621
■1001 ▼aCisse, Abdoulaye.
■24510▼aEssays in Energy Economics
■260 ▼a[Sl]▼bUniversity of California, Berkeley▼c2025
■260 1▼aAnn Arbor▼bProQuest Dissertations & Theses▼c2025
■300 ▼a254 p
■500 ▼aSource: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-01, Section: A.
■500 ▼aAdvisor: Ligon, Ethan.
■5021 ▼aThesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2025.
■520 ▼aThis dissertation draws on large administrative datasets from Senegal and employs both causal inference techniques and structural quantitative models to quantify the welfare impacts of key features of electricity markets in low-income countries: unreliable grid supply, uneven adoption of new metering technologies, and electricity theft.The first chapter of the dissertation focuses on electricity reliability and is motivated by two stylized facts: 1) governments and donors invest heavily in expanding access to electricity in low-income countries, and 2) recent studies document small impacts of access to grid electricity on consumer welfare in several low-income countries. In this chapter, I provide new evidence on the impact of grid reliability on the willingness to pay (WTP) for grid electricity based on large-scale reliability improvement projects in Senegal's electricity supply network. I use high-frequency geocoded administrative data on outages, customer-level bills covering the universe of electricity users, and rich geocoded data on the economic activities of households and firms to conduct two analyses. First, I estimate the causal effect of improved reliability on consumers through a difference-in-differences approach that leverages the variation in the timing of reliability projects. I find that these projects reduced outage duration by 40%, increased electricity consumption by 8%, and led to greater appliance ownership, a reallocation of time away from household chores to wage labor, and lower disconnection rates. Second, I estimate a quantitative demand model and a random-coefficient discrete choice model of energy sources. I find that reliability projects increase the WTP for an additional hour of grid electricity by 10%, from an average of $0.20. This increase varies over peak and off-peak hours and differs significantly across customer types (firms versus households) and by establishment size (small versus large). This finding corresponds to an internal rate of return for reliability projects exceeding 30%. My findings suggest that reliability improvements can significantly increase the value of grid electricity, even in contexts where baseline reliability and the WTP for grid electricity are low.The second chapter quantifies the role of switching costs in the under-adoption of prepaid electricity meters in Senegal, despite their clear monetary benefits. Using the universe of monthly billing data from 2012 to 2024, I first show that switching to prepaid meters leads to a significant reduction in electricity consumption relative to remaining on postpaid meters. This reflects two monetary incentives: prepaid meters offer a cheaper tariff schedule and promote lower consumption through their pay-as-you-go structure. To understand why many customers fail to switch despite these potential gains, I develop and estimate a three-stage dynamic discrete choice model of voluntary prepaid adoption. In the model, customers decide whether to request a switch, utilities decide whether to offer one, and customers then accept or reject the offer. The model captures key frictions: switching costs, transaction costs, information frictions, and payment enforcement. I estimate the model using distance-based instruments and calibrate it to match moments in the billing data. Using the estimated parameters, I simulate counterfactual adoption under three policy scenarios (voluntary adoption, universal prepaid, and forced switching of non-payers) across four environments: with and without tariff differentials, transaction costs, and switching costs. I find that prepaid meters generate larger monetary gains for poorer customers, but these customers are less likely to adopt. The primary reason is switching costs: they explain 15-20% of under-adoption among small residential and commercial users-those with the highest monetary gains-but only 2-3% among large users. Transaction costs, information frictions, and enforcement risk play marginal roles. These results highlight that voluntary adoption may fail to reach customers with the largest potential benefits if they face high switching costs. As a result, policies relying solely on voluntary uptake may be ineffective or even welfare-reducing for the most constrained consumers.The third chapter studies electricity fraud, an issue faced by utility providers in low-income countries. Using a uniquely rich dataset that links the universe of customer-level theft incidents to disaggregated billing records from 2012 to 2024, I quantify how theft behavior varies across customer types and how it responds to electricity price changes. I begin by characterizing the demographic and behavioral profiles of theft-prone customers. Theft is more common among older, long-tenured residential clients living in free-standing homes with few appliances and repeated disconnections, suggesting that necessity, familiarity with the system, and weak enforcement contribute to sustained illicit behavior. Next, I estimate the impact of price changes on theft behavior using a difference-in-differences framework. The identification strategy leverages quasi-experimental variation from administrative reclassification of customers into different tariff categories, which result in quasi-exogenous changes to their average and marginal prices. I document that these reclassified customers experience a 7-10% price drop, accompanied by a 1.5-2 percentage point decline in recorded theft incidence. Given a baseline theft incidence of 1-2%, this implies a theft elasticity with respect to price in the range of +1.5 to +1.7. This suggests that even modest reductions in price can induce sizable declines in fraud among consumers at the margin of tariff reclassification. These findings demonstrate that electricity theft is not only a function of enforcement failures or behavioral norms, but is also highly sensitive to price structure. The results underscore the importance of accounting for consumer-level incentives when designing tariff policy, and suggest that price reforms can serve as effective tools in theft mitigation strategies-especially when targeted at customers for whom affordability is a binding constraint.Taken together, these three chapters show how pricing, behavioral frictions, and enforcement shape electricity access and consumption in low-income countries. The analysis uncovers key demand-side constraints that influence the effectiveness of pricing reforms, technology adoption, and anti-theft efforts. The findings highlight the importance of aligning tariff structures, metering strategies, and enforcement policies with consumer behavior. In doing so, this work contributes to the design of electricity markets towards economic efficiency.
■590 ▼aSchool code: 0028.
■650 4▼aEnergy
■653 ▼aPrepaid meters
■653 ▼aReliability
■653 ▼aSenegal
■653 ▼aTariff schedule
■653 ▼aWillingness to pay
■690 ▼a0791
■690 ▼a0511
■690 ▼a0501
■71020▼aUniversity of California, Berkeley▼bAgricultural & Resource Economics.
■7730 ▼tDissertations Abstracts International▼g87-01A.
■790 ▼a0028
■791 ▼aPh.D.
■792 ▼a2025
■793 ▼aEnglish
■85640▼uhttp://www.riss.kr/pdu/ddodLink.do?id=T17357558▼nKERIS▼z이 자료의 원문은 한국교육학술정보원에서 제공합니다.


