Job Market Paper
Impact of corruption on efficiency of electric utility services. Evidence from USA (submitted for publication, March 2025).
Abstract: This paper investigates if a corrupt environment impacts the efficiency and reliability of electricity provision in the United States. A corrupt environment generally leads to more corrupt activities and that can impact all kinds of economic activity including the energy sector. Electric utilities are prone to corruption because electric utilities can be affected by weak infrastructure, electricity theft which reduces efficiency. I used state level corruption convictions data for the years 2009-2017 and state level reliability data from 2013-2017. Electric power outage is measured by the total number of blackouts a state encounters in any given year. Reliability of electric utilities is measured by how many minutes an average stays without power and how many customers on an average lose power. These indices known as SAIDI and SAIFI are reported to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Using a mixed effects linear model which includes both fixed effects and random effects, I find that corruption has no impact on outages or reliability. However I do find that states with higher population face less reliable electricity and higher blackouts.
Working papers
Impact of Community Choice Aggregation programs on electricity rate in US (submitted for publication in Applied Economics Letters, March 2025).
Green but corrupt? Evidence of bribery in the renewable energy sector (with Cristina Strango and Mihai Mutascu) (revise and resubmit Natural Resources Forum, October 2024).
Work-in-progress
Impact of coal thermal power plants on mortality rate (with Vikrant Kamble and Dylan Brewer).