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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
150356
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| Summary/Abstract |
Off-grid technologies are increasingly being proposed as a way of ensuring cost efficient universal access to electricity in many developing countries. However, many un-electrified communities would prefer access to electricity via the national grid rather than off-grid technologies. Electricity planning based on cost efficiency alone could therefore be undermined by political pressure from discontented communities that are assigned off-grid technologies. Using a case study of un-electrified communities in Ghana, we develop an electricity planning algorithm based on hierarchical lexicographic programming and consider specifications where the priorities are adjusted to give weight to (1) cost efficiency and (2) political economy considerations so that communities with larger populations (and therefore votes) are given priority in terms of grid electrification. The results emphasise the need to incorporate the political economy considerations in the national planning of universal electrification, showing significant regional differences in terms of where grid extensions ought to be placed. Incorporating a political economy perspective in national planning also suggests that the most important policy trade-offs shift from considering the grid versus off-grid balance to focussing more on the effectiveness of grid investment in providing universal access.
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| 2 |
ID:
112782
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Contributions to the quantitative civil war literature increasingly rely on geo-referenced data and disaggregated research designs. While this is a welcome trend, it necessitates geographic information systems (GIS) skills and imposes new challenges for data collection and analysis. So far, solutions to these challenges differ between studies, obstructing direct comparison of findings and hampering replication and extension of earlier work. This article presents a standardized structure for storing, manipulating, and analyzing high-resolution spatial data. PRIO-GRID is a vector grid network with a resolution of 0.5 x 0.5 decimal degrees, covering all terrestrial areas of the world. Gridded data comprise inherently apolitical entities; the grid cells are fixed in time and space, they are insensitive to political boundaries and developments, and they are completely exogenous to likely features of interest, such as civil war outbreak, ethnic settlement patterns, extreme weather events, or the spatial distribution of wealth. Moreover, unlike other disaggregated approaches, gridded data may be scaled up or down in a consistent manner by varying the resolution of the grid. The released dataset comes with cell-specific information on a large selection of political, economic, demographic, environmental, and conflict variables for all years, 1946-2008. A simple descriptive data assessment of population density and economic activity is offered to demonstrate how PRIO-GRID may be applied in quantitative social science research.
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