NDLI: Effects of Rural Electrification on Employment: A Comment on Dinkelman

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Effects of Rural Electrification on Employment: A Comment on Dinkelman

Content Provider	Scilit
Author	Bensch, Gunther Gotz, Gunnar Peters, Jörg
Copyright Year	2020
Description	Journal: SSRN Electronic Journal This paper replicates and extends the seminal paper by Dinkelman (2011) on the impacts of electrification on female employment. We revisit the validity of the identification strategy that uses the land gradient as an instrumental variable (IV). Our robustness checks cast doubt on the exclusion restriction as the IV drives the outcome variable in non-electrified regions. We also demonstrate that it is more difficult to disentangle the effects of electricity and road infrastructure than the original paper claims, because the IV affects both. We additionally highlight that the IV is weak, consequently preventing interpretation of the point estimates that are used throughout the original paper. The concomitance of a questionable exclusion restriction and a weak IV is particularly problematic. We conclude by arguing that the take-aways of the original paper for policy and the academic literature need to be reconsidered. In general terms, our comment shows the difficulties of using geographical variation as a natural experiment for infrastructure evaluation.
Related Links	https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/214184/1/1690488735.pdf https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=3568176
ISSN	10914358
e-ISSN	15565068
DOI	10.2139/ssrn.3568176
Journal	SSRN Electronic Journal
Language	English
Publisher	Elsevier BV
Publisher Date	2020-04-03
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Journal: SSRN Electronic Journal Environmental Studies Research Transparency Instrumental Variables.
Content Type	Text
Subject	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health Psychiatry and Mental Health

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