Fracking, farmers, and rural electrification in India

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• ISBN: 978-3-96973-001-0
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Ruhr Economic Papers ; No. 864

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; National Government Expenditures and Related Policies: Infrastructures; Other Public Investment and Capital Stock ; Economic Development: Agriculture; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Other Primary Products ; Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration ; Economic Development: Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure ; Energy: General ; Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth ; Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics
• Subject: rural electrification ; heterogeneous impacts ; labor markets ; productive use ; economic development ; regression discontinuity ; India

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Fetter, T. Robert ; Usmani, Faraz
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung
• (where): Essen
• (when): 2020

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.4419/96973001
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/224779
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET