Browsing by Author "Jeuland, MA"
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Item Open Access Economic implications of climate change for infrastructure planning in transboundary water systems: An example from the Blue Nile(Water Resources Research, 2010-12-10) Jeuland, MAThis research develops a hydroeconomic modeling framework for integrating climate change impacts into the problem of planning water resources infrastructure development. It then illustrates use of that framework in evaluation of two alternative sizes of a potential hydropower project along the Blue Nile in Ethiopia. Storing water in a Blue Nile reservoir provides an interesting case for testing this integrated approach because such a project would induce a number of physical and economic changes, both transboundary and climate-dependent. The proposed framework makes two contributions to the existing literature on water resources project appraisal. First, it demonstrates how routinely used hydrological modeling techniques can be supplemented with Monte Carlo simulation to include economic uncertainties inherent in the planning problem, in addition to its more commonly considered physical dimensions. Second, it demonstrates how analysts can include a number of linkages between climate change, hydrology, and economic production in conventional planning models to develop better understanding of the complexities and important uncertainties associated with future conditions. While the framework described here has not been used in a full analysis of alternative development projects in the Blue Nile, the general approach could be combined with a variety of decision-analytic tools to evaluate design and management alternatives in water resources systems. Copyright 2010 by the American Geophysical Union.Item Open Access NGOs and the effectiveness of interventions(WIDER Working Paper, 2018-05-31) Usmani, F; Jeuland, MA; Pattanayak, SKInterventions in remote, rural settings face high transaction costs. We develop a model of household decision-making to evaluate how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) address these implementation-related challenges and influence intervention effectiveness. To test our model’s predictions, we create a sample of observationally similar Indian villages that differ in their prior engagement with a local development NGO. In partnership with this NGO, we then stratify a randomized technology promotion intervention on this institutional variable. We uncover a large, positive, and statistically significant ‘NGO effect’: prior engagement with the NGO increases the effectiveness of our intervention by at least 30 per cent. Our results have implications for the generalizability of experimental research conducted jointly with NGOs. In particular, attempts to scale-up findings from such work may prove less successful than anticipated if the role of NGOs is insufficiently understood. Alternatively, policy makers looking to scale-up could achieve greater success by enlisting trusted local partners.Item Open Access The Price of Purity: Willingness to pay for air and water purification technologies in Rajasthan, India(Environmental and Resource Economics) Shannon, Alexandra; Usmani, F; Pattanayak, SK; Jeuland, MADiarrheal illnesses and acute respiratory infections are among the top causes for premature death and disability across the developing world, and adoption of various technologies for avoiding these illnesses remains extremely low. We exploit data from a unique contingent valuation experiment to consider whether households in rural Rajasthan are unwilling to make investments in "domain-specific" environmental health technologies when faced with health risks in multiple domains. Results indicate that demand for water-related risk reductions is higher on average than demand for air-related risk reduction. In addition, households' private health benefits from mitigating diarrheal (respiratory) disease risks are higher (no different) when community-level air pollution risks, rather than community-level water pollution risks, have previously been mitigated. This asymmetric response cannot fully be explained by survey order effects or embedding, but rather suggests that that the broader health environment and the salience of particular risks may be important in households' decision to adopt environmental health technologies.