Development Effects of Electrification in Brazil – A Comment on Lipscomb et al. (2013)
This comment replicates the influential paper published by Lipscomb, Mobarak, and Braham in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics in 2013. We show that the significance and robustness of their findings hinge upon a self-defined demarcation of the Amazon region, which is not consistently used in the different steps of their analysis. When re-estimating their models using a consistent Amazon definition, the precision of the LMB estimates vanishes. Modifying the definition of the Amazon according to a geographically motivated, administratively recognized demarcation, or excluding the region entirely, has the same effect.
United States Association for Energy Economics (USAEE)
JEL-Klassifikation: H54, O13, Q41
DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3980178