IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/1066.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Opportunity Cost Of Electricity Outages And Privatization Of Substations In Nepal

Author

Listed:
  • Aygul Ozbafli

    (Queen's University)

  • Glenn Jenkins
  • Roop Jyoti

    (Ministry of Finance, Nepal)

Abstract

The unreliability of electricity supplies is a major cause of the high cost of manufacturing in developing countries. In this paper we are able to measure the cost imposed by power outages and suggest some feasible mitigating measures. The study employs a rich, if not unique, set of data from three large manufacturing enterprises in Nepal. Using it the opportunity costs to the enterprises from lost production from electricity outages can be estimated accurately. Power outages due to substation failure can be separated from other electricity systems failures. An analysis is carried out on the feasibility of privatized electricity substations. We find that this is a very worthwhile capital investment for the private sector to undertake, even when additional generation capacity to improve overall electricity reliability is not justified.

Suggested Citation

  • Aygul Ozbafli & Glenn Jenkins & Roop Jyoti, 2006. "The Opportunity Cost Of Electricity Outages And Privatization Of Substations In Nepal," Working Paper 1066, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1066
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/qed_wp_1066.pdf
    File Function: First version 2006
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Beenstock & Ephraim Goldin & Yoel Haitovsky, 1997. "The Cost of Power Outages in the Business and Public Sectors in Israel: Revealed Preference vs. Subjective Valuation," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 39-61.
    2. Benjamin Bental & S. Abraham Ravid, 1982. "A Simple Method for Evaluating the Marginal Cost of Unsupplied Electricity," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(1), pages 249-253, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fisher-Vanden, Karen & Mansur, Erin T. & Wang, Qiong (Juliana), 2015. "Electricity shortages and firm productivity: Evidence from China's industrial firms," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 172-188.
    2. Azam Chaudhry, 2010. "A Panel Data Analysis of Electricity Demand in Pakistan," Lahore Journal of Economics, Department of Economics, The Lahore School of Economics, vol. 15(Special E), pages 75-106, September.
    3. Timilsina, Govinda & Steinbuks, Jevgenijs, 2021. "Economic costs of electricity load shedding in Nepal," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    4. Fakih Ali & Ghazalian Pascal & Ghazzawi Nancy, 2020. "The Effects of Power Outages on the Performance of Manufacturing Firms in the MENA Region," Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, De Gruyter, vol. 16(3), pages 1-28, December.
    5. Lassana Cissokho, 2015. "Power Outages and the Productivity of Small and Medium Enterprises: the role of Formality," EcoMod2015 8239, EcoMod.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Majid Hashemi & Glenn P. Jenkins & Roop Jyoti & Aygul Ozbafli, 2018. "Evaluating the Cost to Industry of Electricity Outages," Development Discussion Papers 2018-14, JDI Executive Programs.
    2. Musiliu O. Oseni, 2017. "Self-Generation and Households' Willingness to Pay for Reliable Electricity Service in Nigeria," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4).
    3. Adenikinju, Adeola F., 2003. "Electric infrastructure failures in Nigeria: a survey-based analysis of the costs and adjustment responses," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(14), pages 1519-1530, November.
    4. Lamessa Tariku ABDISA, 2018. "Power Outages, its Economic Cost and Firm Performance: Evidence from Ethiopia," Departmental Working Papers 2018-01, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    5. Steinbuks, J. & Foster, V., 2010. "When do firms generate? Evidence on in-house electricity supply in Africa," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 505-514, May.
    6. Musiliu 0. Oseni & Michael G. Pollitt, 2013. "The Economic Costs of Unsupplied Electricty: Evidence from Backup Generation among African Firms," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1351, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    7. Bespalova, Olga, 2007. "Методы Дифференциации Тарифов На Электроэнергию По Надежности [Methods for Differentiating Electricity Tariffs by Reliability]," MPRA Paper 117334, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Mark Morrison & Craig Nalder, 2009. "Willingness to Pay for Improved Quality of Electricity Supply Across Business Type and Location," The Energy Journal, , vol. 30(2), pages 117-134, April.
    9. Brown, David P. & Muehlenbachs, Lucija, 2023. "The Value of Electricity Reliability: Evidence from Battery Adoption," Working Papers 2023-5, University of Alberta, Department of Economics, revised 26 Jul 2024.
    10. Klaus Moeltner & David F. Layton, 2002. "A Censored Random Coefficients Model For Pooled Survey Data With Application To The Estimation Of Power Outage Costs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(3), pages 552-561, August.
    11. Mubashir Qasim & Koji Kotani, 2014. "An empirical analysis of energy shortage in Pakistan," Asia-Pacific Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 21(1), pages 137-166, June.
    12. Jevgenijs Steinbuks, 2008. "Financial constraints and firms' investment: results of a natural experiment measuring firm response to power interruption," Working Papers EPRG 0823, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    13. Wolf, André & Wenzel, Lars, 2016. "Regional diversity in the costs of electricity outages: Results for German counties," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(PB), pages 195-205.
    14. Alastaire S na ALINSATO, 2015. "Economic Valuation of Electrical Service Reliability for Households in Developing Country: A Censored Random Coefficient Model Approach," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 5(1), pages 352-359.
    15. Oseni, Musiliu O. & Pollitt, Michael G., 2015. "A firm-level analysis of outage loss differentials and self-generation: Evidence from African business enterprises," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(PB), pages 277-286.
    16. Azam Chaudhry, 2010. "A Panel Data Analysis of Electricity Demand in Pakistan," Lahore Journal of Economics, Department of Economics, The Lahore School of Economics, vol. 15(Special E), pages 75-106, September.
    17. Ajodhia, Virendra & Hakvoort, Rudi, 2005. "Economic regulation of quality in electricity distribution networks," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 211-221, September.
    18. Abdisa, Lamessa T., 2018. "Power outages, economic cost, and firm performance: Evidence from Ethiopia," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 111-120.
    19. Landegren, Finn & Johansson, Jonas & Samuelsson, Olof, 2019. "Quality of supply regulations versus societal priorities regarding electricity outage consequences: Case study in a Swedish context," International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, Elsevier, vol. 26(C).
    20. Tiwari, Aviral Kumar & Eapen, Leena Mary & Nair, Sthanu R, 2021. "Electricity consumption and economic growth at the state and sectoral level in India: Evidence using heterogeneous panel data methods," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    opportunity costs; reliability; electricity supply; privatization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1066. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark Babcock (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.