Comment on "Development Effects of Electrification: Evidence from the Topographic Placement of Hydropower Plants in Brazil"
Lipscomb, Mobarak, and Barham (2013) document large positive effects of electrification in Brazil due to broad-based improvements in labor productivity. They instrument electrification by simulating a hypothetical power grid roll-out driven solely by geographic factors. Their estimates are not robust to repeated runs of the simulation, which in most cases lead to weak instruments. Furthermore, removing coding errors turns the main outcomes and most originally identified mechanisms statistically insignificant in most of the repeated runs, even when using a specification proposed in a corrigendum published by the original authors.
Institute for Replication (I4R)
ISSN: 2752-1931
JEL-Klassifikation: C26, O13, C52, O18