Abdulrazzak Tamim

Work in Progress

Rationing by Intermittency

Over one billion people receive piped water on an intermittent schedule: the pipe is pressurized only a few hours or days per week. Economists have long studied non-price rationing via quantity caps and queues, but both assume the good remains continuously available. Intermittency rations a different dimension (access itself) and forces households to invest in private storage to smooth consumption across supply interruptions. This paper asks: what is the welfare cost of this form of rationing, and what prevents governments from replacing it with pricing plus redistribution?

Ethiopia’s Electronic Water Bill Payments: A Randomized Controlled Trial

While numerous studies examine mobile money adoption for firms and person-to-person transfers, evidence on electronic bill payments for utilities remains scarce. We address this gap with a randomized controlled trial in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where despite availability of multiple electronic payment channels, most households pay water bills in person. We randomly assign households to receive a discount or e-payment training. This design identifies price sensitivity and information barriers in utility payment digitalization, informing Ethiopia’s national digital transformation agenda.

Co-authors:

Tsega Adego Abebe, Joseph Levine