People desire electricity not for its own sake but for the wide-ranging services it provides from lighting, communication and entertainment, refrigeration, and cooking to space conditioning and business...
The Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) in the World Bank, in consultation with multiple development partners, has developed the Multi-Tier Framework (MTF) to measure and monitor energy...
Many of the enterprises that make up Bangladesh’s dominant nonfarm sector (85 percent of GDP) are located in rural areas (World Bank 2015). Electrifying them can be a major driving force behind economic...
Meeting the goal of universal access to clean cooking by 2030 remains a formidable challenge, as the current growth rate in clean-cooking coverage lags far behind the rate required to meet the goal (0.5...
Electrification has been shown to accelerate opportunities for women by moving them into more productive activities, but whether improvements in economic outcomes also change gender norms and practices...
As many as 50 million people in Pakistan may still live without connection to the electric grid. Pakistan also has some of the world's worst power outages. Using data from a nationally representative two-period...
Grid connectivity in rural Lao PDR yields widespread benefits: substantial improvements in household income, spending, ownership of durable assets, and children's education. Policymakers should consider...
Achieving universal access to electricity is one of the most important energy policy goals set by governments in the developing world. The recent empirical literature, however, paints a mixed picture about...
Simultaneity of borrowing, withdrawal of savings, and loan defaults due to the pronounced seasonality of ag-riculture often leads to investment failure of rural financial institutions. Lack of borrowing...
This paper estimates the welfare impact of rural electrification in India using nationally representative household panel survey data for 2005 and 2012. Analysis based on a propensity-score-weighted fixed-effects...
The recent past has witnessed phenomenal growth in MFIs around the world. Today as many as 200 million people are beneficiaries of microfinance. Given its worldwide attention, microfinance has received...
Access to infrastructure is a key driver for reducing poverty and promoting shared prosperity. In Bangladesh, where economic growth has accelerated steadily over the past decades, about a third of the...
Microfinance institutions, often criticized for inadequately addressing seasonality and hard-core poverty, have begun to introduce innovative programs designed to tackle both concerns. One such program...
India has led the developing world in addressing rural energy problems. By late 2012, the national electricity grid had reached 92 percent of India’s rural villages, about 880 million people. In more remote...
Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in raising living standards and reducing poverty, particularly in previously lagging regions. Rapid solar home system (SHS) expansion in Bangladesh to some 3 million...
This paper uses long panel survey data spanning over 20 years to examine the dynamics of microcredit programs in Bangladesh. With the phenomenal growth of microfinance institutions representing 30 million...
The Government of Bangladesh, with help from the World Bank and other donors, has provided aid to a local agency called Infrastructure Development Company Limited and its partner organizations to devise...
Household air pollution is the second leading cause of disease in Madagascar, where more than 99 percent of households rely on solid biomass, such as charcoal, wood, and crop waste, as the main cooking...
This brief summarizes the welfare impacts of rural electrification: evidence from Vietnam for the period 2000-2004. Access to electricity is a key to any development initiative and there is a growing body...
Microcredit programs in Bangladesh have experienced spectacular growth in recent years, with a growing number of borrowers availing credit from multiple microcredit agencies. There is a growing concern...