Daniel R Thomas

Daniel R Thomas

Research Scientist, Core Data Science, Facebook

Posts by Collection

inprogress

publications

Early Electrification and the Quality of Service: Evidence from Rural India

Published in Energy For Sustainable Development, 2018

Rural electrification has progressed unevenly across the world since 1945, with some rural communities gaining access to power decades earlier than others. We examine the association between early electrification and the quality of electricity service to households, testing the hypothesis that aging infrastructure compromises the quality of electricity service. Using the 2014-2015 ACCESS survey from rural India, we find that early electrification is associated with improvements in the quality of electricity service, even controlling for village size and distance to nearest town. A possible explanation for the finding is that early electrification generates economic gains that allow the rural community to invest in maintenance and upgrades.

Recommended citation: Thomas, D.R. and Urpelainen, J., 2018. "Early electrification and the quality of service: Evidence from rural India." Energy for Sustainable Development. 44. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3119999

Understanding Segmentation in Rural Electricity Markets: Evidence from India

Published in Energy Economics, 2020

How can demand for electricity be estimated without fine-grained usage data? Employing an original and large dataset, we develop a novel method for determining drivers of demand without electricity meter data. We first segment Indian consumers by their willingness to pay for electricity service, their level of usage, and their satisfaction with lighting, and then use cluster membership as a dependent variable in order to determine which household-level factors predict electricity usage. Our approach employs machine-learning and more traditional regression techniques to determine the optimal number of segments, generate the segments, and determine the predictors of segment membership. The dataset consists of more than 10,000 households in more than 200 villages in the states of Bihar, Odisha, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. We find that the rural Indian electricity market can be segmented into three clusters based on households’ willingness to pay, satisfaction with lighting, and appliance wattage. The clusters consist of potential customers, low-demand customers, and high-use customers. We then determine the predictors of membership in these clusters. We show that different types of consumers can be identified along easily observable measures. Moreover, we show that there are clear groups of consumers that vary along their satisfaction, willingness to pay, and existing appliance usage.

Recommended citation: Thomas, D.R., Agrawal, S., Harish, S.P., Mahajan, A. and Urpelainen, J., 2020. "Understanding segmentation in rural electricity markets: Evidence from India." Energy Economics. 87. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3531197

The Effects of Rural Electrification in India: An Instrumental Variable Approach at the Household Level

Published in Journal of Development Economics, 2020

Governments in developing countries are investing billions of dollars to increase electricity access in rural areas, but the literature on the impact of these investments has produced mixed results. We leverage a unique characteristic of household electrification policy in Uttar Pradesh, India, whereby only households within 40 meters of an electricity pole are eligible for a legal electrical connection, to estimate the causal impact of electrification using a pre-registered instrumental variable design. With an original survey of 686 households across 120 habitations in the Bahraich district of Uttar Pradesh, we find that legal electrification has a positive impact on household expenditures, adult household activities, and ownership and usage of appliances. The results suggest a more optimistic picture about the impact of rural electrification than some previous studies.

Recommended citation: Thomas, D.R., Harish, S.P., Kennedy, R. and Urpelainen, J., 2020. "The effects of rural electrification in India: An instrumental variable approach at the household level." Journal of Development Economics. 146. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3625682

teaching

POLS 3720: Scope and Methods

TA for Dr. Abdullah Aydogan in Fall 2019 and Dr. Chiara Superti in Spring 2020. Undergraduate lecture., Columbia University, 2020