Switching the lights off: The impact of energy tariff increases on households in the Kyrgyz Republic
Franziska Gassmann
No 2012-066, MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT)
Abstract:
Raising energy prices to cost-recovery tariffs has several implications. The implicit (quasi-fiscal) subsidization of the energy sector will be reduced to a large extent. Energy companies will have higher revenues, and consumers will be faced with a major increase of their energy bills and potentially high welfare losses. Removing subsidies affects poor households more as they spend on average a larger share of household income on energy and because they have fewer options to adjust their energy consumption. This paper analyses the impact of higher energy tariffs on households in the Kyrgyz Republic using micro-data from the Kyrgyz Integrated Household Survey 2009. It aims at answering the question which households will be most affected by higher energy tariffs and to what extent mitigation measures, such as lifeline tariffs or direct cash transfers could soften the impact on poor and vulnerable households. The analysis focuses on first-order effects and uses benefit incidence analysis and static micro-simulation to estimate expected costs and benefits of higher energy prices and the corresponding mitigation measures. Results suggest that both the type of energy and the level of connectedness matter. Increasing tariffs for thermal power used for central heating and hot water mainly affects richer households in urban areas. Reducing implicit electricity subsidies affects the whole population due to nearly full country coverage with electricity connections. Lifeline tariffs for electricity could mitigate the effect of higher tariffs to a certain extent as long as households have actual control over their consumption. However, all households would benefit equally. Direct cash transfers targeted at poor households improve the targeting performance and lower the costs compared to universal subsidies.
Keywords: energy; subsidies; poverty; social transfers; Kyrgyz Republic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 I38 P22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)
Downloads: (external link)
https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2012/wp2012-066.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Switching the lights off: The impact of energy tariff increases on households in the Kyrgyz Republic (2014) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unm:unumer:2012066
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ad Notten ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).