RUHR - ECONOMIC PAPERS - Rural Electrification, the Credibility Revolution, and the Limits of

Schmidt Rural Electrification, the Credibility Revolution, and the Limits of Evidence-Based Policy Bibliografische Informationen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalb ibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at RWI is funded by the Federal Government and the federal state of. [...] 2 painting.2 We use the case of rural electrification to show that even in a rich literature the pointillist painting is hard to compile and the dots on the canvas leave a lot of room for interpretation. [...] To understand the policy implication of this, the size of the effect must be assessed in relationship to the costs. [...] (2020b), focusing on grid electrification, point to the large number of IVs in that literature and suggest that “it is hard to rule out the possibility that the correlation between the instrument and the dependent variable runs through additional channels beyond electrification”. [...] What are the implications for the learning model in the electrification literature and beyond? One response would be to conduct more and more design-based studies, accompanied by robustness replications ensuring that the right inference is being made, and hope for a clearer picture emerging in the literature soon.