World Development Perspectives最新文献

The Indian government promoted the adoption of LPG by millions of poor households through targeted Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana connection subsidies. However, there is no empirical study on the impact of LPG adoption and usage on cooking energy efficiency. It is important to analyze the causal impact of LPG usage on cooking energy efficiency to help estimate the energy saving resulting from fuel-switching and understand the implications for the improvement of the environment, health, and socioeconomic outcomes. This paper leverages panel data on rural household energy use from the Access to Clean Cooking Energy and Electricity – Survey of States survey to evaluate the impact of the share of LPG consumption on overall cooking energy efficiency in 5,590 [n = 1,538 in 2015 and n = 4,052 in 2018] LPG adopters. To account for the potential endogeneity posed by the share of LPG consumption on our dependent variable, we used the village-level fraction of households who report the use of LPG as the main source of cooking fuel as an instrumental variable. We find a statistically significant impact of LPG consumption share on improved household cooking energy efficiency. A 10 % increase in the share of LPG reduces the total useful energy consumed by 9 % and the final energy consumed by 23 %. The extrapolated result indicates that the shift by all partial LPG user households in rural India in 2018 to exclusive (100 %) use of LPG will save about 81 million tonnes of firewood or 3.34 % of India’s primary energy consumption. A pro-poor subsidies for LPG refill and other policy measures that encourage households to shift to more exclusive use of LPG can reduce overall household energy consumption which is expected in turn to help achieve the environmental and health benefits of improved energy efficiency.

Innovation has long been recognized in economic literature as an important source of Schumpeterian disequilibrium for societies’ economic development, but until now, it has played no role in the debate on the political stability of countries regarding its disequilibrating and destabilization role between societal demands and government capabilities. Thus, the extent to which a country’s level of innovation disequilibrates public demands and government capabilities and leads to adverse impacts on political stability has been neglected in the literature. This paper analyzes the effects of innovation on the political stability of countries using 2013–2020 panel data for 121 countries from the World Bank and the World Intellectual Property Organization in static and dynamic simulation frameworks. The paper uses panel endogenous switching regression with control function, the robust Arellano-Bover/Blundell-Bond system dynamic panel model, and other techniques that have never been used before in this subject matter to disentangle the effects of innovation on political stability. The dependent variable is an index measuring political stability, and the explanatory variable indicates a country’s level of innovation. Controls include the country’s institutional, socioeconomic, and environmental factors. Endogeneity is controlled using a combination of traditional instrumental variables, lag variables in dynamic systems, and endogenous treatment models. The findings are that the recent rapid rise and proliferation of innovation negatively correlate with political stability, especially in countries with high levels of innovation production. On average, rising levels of uncontrolled innovation reduce political stability by 48 percent in high-innovation-producing countries relative to low-innovation-producing countries. High institutional quality factors, such as improvement in voice and accountability and the rule of law, moderate the negative relationship between innovation and political stability. The findings confirm the relevance of other-disregarded factors in sustaining and improving political stability and reinforce the importance and urgent need for enhanced regulatory mechanisms for the production, dissemination, and use of innovation.

A bride price creates an unending bond for married couples in sub-Sahara Africa. This gesture is key within the Brifor cultural milieu in Ghana. This paper investigates the impact of bride price on marriage stability among the Brifor ethnic group. In-depth interviews were conducted with 45 Key Informants and seven defined groups. The results show that the cultural demands of high bride price payment among the Brifors stabilizes marriages, secures the entitlement right of the husband to the woman and children, but increases incidences of violence against women. From the results it is evident that apart from the high bride price payment contributing to marriage instability, there is also the indication that the abuse of the rights of wives depends largely on the character of the husbands, including the cultural mindset instilled in them through biological traits and/or family socialization in relation to their culture. The study concludes that although most participants felt that the practice of paying bride price should be reviewed, it was evident that the payment has become a double-edge sword confronting women in particular, relative to the stability or instability of marriages among the Brifors. Therefore, there is the need for traditional authority to reform the practice by reducing the bride price items and spacing out the payment period as a respite for husbands-to-be.

Fuel stacking perpetuates the negative impacts of polluting fuels and limits the potential of clean cooking transitions. The study aims to identify drivers of fuel stacking amongst customers of a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) LPG product provided by MGas in the greater Nairobi area as a basis for designing interventions that reduce fuel stacking. We developed a quantitative telephonic survey tool (n = 1323) to holistically investigate fuel stacking, which was validated by a smaller number of qualitative semi-structured interviews (n = 18). Both the survey and interview designs were informed by Perros et al.’s 2022 taxonomy of fuel stacking drivers. Results showed that the main driver of fuel stacking was the incompatibility of PAYG LPG with specific cooking processes that were conducted regularly. This was most frequently due to the expense of heating large quantities of water and cooking long-boiling foods with PAYG LPG – tasks that participants reported are better performed by other stoves and fuels. Participants also faced technical and service-related issues with broken equipment, payment delays and incompatible personal cookware that sometimes rendered them unable to use PAYG LPG. We found weak correlation between self-reported stacking and actual PAYG LPG fuel use. These findings show that a single fuel or cooking technology is unlikely to efficiently and consistently meet all a household’s cooking and water heating needs, and that fuel consumption is not solely driven by stacking practices. Clean energy providers should consider incorporating multiple modern energy cooking services comprising of fuel, stoves and compatible cooking utensils (e.g., pots and pans).