Abdoulaye Cisse received his PhD from ARE in 2025. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton and a research economist at the World Bank. "I am getting the credit for this work, but it's the result of the training received in ARE. Thank you to the department for endorsing and submitting my nomination. I am sincerely grateful to the ARE community for the support, guidance and encouragement over the years. It is a privilege to be a part of this community," reacted Abdou upon receiving the news.
His dissertation uses large administrative datasets from Senegal and combines causal inference with structural modeling to study how electricity market features affect welfare in low-income countries. It focuses on three issues: grid reliability, adoption of prepaid meters, and electricity theft. First, it examines electricity reliability using large-scale reliability improvement projects. Exploiting variation in project timing, the analysis shows that improved reliability reduced outage duration by 40% and increased electricity consumption by 8%. It also led to higher appliance ownership, shifts from household chores to wage labor, and lower disconnection rates. Structural demand estimates indicate that improved reliability raises WTP for an additional hour of electricity by 10%, from an average of $0.20, with substantial heterogeneity across households, firms, and time of use. These gains imply an internal rate of return exceeding 30%, highlighting the high welfare value of reliability investments even for low baseline reliability. Second, it studies why prepaid electricity meters are under-adopted despite clear monetary benefits. Using a dynamic/discrete/choice model, it shows that switching costs are the primary barrier, explaining 15–20% of under-adoption among small residential and commercial users, who stand to gain the most. Other frictions play minor roles, implying that voluntary adoption policies may fail to reach the most constrained consumers. Third, is analyses electricity theft. It finds theft is concentrated among vulnerable/long-tenured households and is highly sensitive to prices. Modest price reductions significantly reduce theft, suggesting tariff design can complement enforcement. Overall, the dissertation highlights how pricing, reliability, and behavioral frictions shape electricity use and welfare in low-income countries.
Congratulations to Abdou, his PhD advisor Ethan Ligon, and committee members Meredith Fowlie and Severin Borenstein.