Fracking, farmers, and rural electrification in India

T. Robert Fetter and Faraz Usmani

No 864, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: The shale gas revolution in the United States induced an unprecedented commodity boom across northwestern India. Leveraging population-based discontinuities in the contemporaneous roll-out of India's national rural electrification scheme, we show that access to electricity increased total employment and nonagricultural employment in villages affected by this exogenous economic shock, but had no impact on labor markets elsewhere. This combination of two natural experiments highlights how complementary economic conditions drive heterogeneity in the labor-market impacts of rural electrification. It also helps explain the large variation in the reported impacts of such resource-intensive infrastructure investments globally.

Keywords: rural electrification; heterogeneous impacts; labor markets; productive use; economic development; regression discontinuity; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H54 O13 O15 O18 Q40 Q56 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-ene and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Journal Article: Fracking, farmers, and rural electrification in India (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:rwirep:864

DOI: 10.4419/96973001

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