Contributor : Profile

Posts by Robin Burgess

Should civil servants be allowed to serve in their home areas?

Bureaucrats form an essential part of State capacity. Should they be allowed to serve in their home areas? This article finds that Indian Administrative Service officers assigned to their home states ...

  • Articles

Let Them Buy Light: The Welfare Benefits of Electricity for Rural Households and Enterprises

This project measured the welfare effects of increased access to electricity for rural households and micro-enterprises by letting them buy light. The research design experimentally offers off-grid, s...

  • IGC Research on India

Lighting Up Bihar: Electrification to Sustain Economic Growth

This project looks at incentivising consumers to pay for the electricity consumed by the area in Bihar. The intervention specifically links the duration of supply to the payment performance of a group...

  • IGC Research on India

Creating entrepreneurs: A big new idea in development

Can the world’s poorest people become entrepreneurs? This column outlines results from an evaluation of the Ultra Poor programme in Bangladesh, a scheme that the NGO behind it claims is a staggering...

  • Articles