Oliver Vanden Eynde, Chaired Professor, Paris School of Economics
Complementarities between infrastructure projects have been understudied. This paper examines interactions in the impacts of large-scale road construction, electrification, and mobile phone coverage programs in rural India. We exploit variation over time in when villages received the programs to study the individual and joint impacts on a range of outcomes. Notably, we find strong evidence that villages increase dry-season cropping when they receive both electricity and roads, but not when they receive one without the other. This increase in dry-season cropping is associated with a move towards market crops and improved economic conditions (i.e., higher assets and consumption). These findings have implications for the optimal implementation of infrastructure programs. (Co-author: Liam Wren-Lewis)