LSE

LJE

Energy

Political Consequences of Reliable Electricity

Project members:
Principal Investigator: Farah Said, Lahore University of Management Sciences
Co-Principal Investigators: Jacopo Bonan, Fondazione Eni Enrico Matteis
Giovanna d’Adda, University of Milan and Mahreen Mahmud, University of Exeter Business School

This research is funded by Lahore School Research Development Fund (LSRDF). We leverage an existing relationship with a large private utility in Pakistan, K-Electric (KE), and a wealth of administrative and electoral data to estimate correlational and causal relationships between political preferences and energy quality. We collect and merge data on losses (e.g. via theft or underpayment), the scheduled and actual load shedding received by a feeder, and the history of line replacements and upgrades with polling station level electoral data from the 2013 and 2018 elections. (The working paper is available here: https://www.rff.org/publications/working-papers/role-flexibility-and-planning-repayment-discipline-evidence-field-experiment-pay-you-go-grid-electricity/)