RESUMEN
"Modern energy for all," an internationally supported initiative to connect populations to electricity services, is expected to help reduce poverty-induced vulnerabilities. It has become a primary strategy for meeting sustainable development goals, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. However, when electricity is supplied by a capacity-constrained grid to a resource-constrained population, the service quality can vary both spatially and temporally. This research explores the quality of electricity services based on a case study of Unguja, Tanzania. Using 1) open-ended interviews, 2) detailed electricity-systems monitoring, and 3) household surveys, we show how voltage quality varies significantly, even within highly localized settings. Fluctuations result in dim lights at best and power outages and broken appliances at worst, denying many Unguja residents the expected benefits of access to modern energy. By combining an extensive understanding of the physical system together with interviews and surveys, this work presents a unique mapping of voltage quality in a system that is financially and physically constrained and highlights the consequences of poor-quality service for poor users.
RESUMEN
We investigate the effects of political activity on pharmaceutical prices, focusing on the health care reform period in the early 1990s.We characterize firms based on their vulnerability to future price regulation and find that the more vulnerable firms were more likely to take various actions to forestall regulation, most notably coordinating on a specific percentage price increase during 1993. Since moderating price increases could have averted regulation, the coordination appears to be the industry's response to a collective action problem.
