Disbursing Emergency Relief Through Utilities: Evidence from Ghana

Abstract

The first warnings from health officials of an oncoming wave of infections began in late 2019. As the Covid-19 public health crisis rapidly spread, it was often followed by deep economic downturns that disproportionately affected the world’s poorest. Many governments responded by expanding or introducing social protection programs, or transfer programs, to provide for the needs of their residents. The aid provided by these transfer programs materialized in different forms, such as providing food or food subsidies, direct cash payments, or energy relief programs. This issue of PERCspectives on Research summarizes working paper 2108, where Steven Puller, PERC’s Professor in Free Enterprise, along with coauthors Susanna B. Berkouwer, Pierre E. Biscaye and Catherine D. Wolfram, explore how program design affects the efficiency and distributional implications of these policies, as well as political popularity, by studying an electricity transfer program in Accra, Ghana.