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Lipscomb, Mobarak, and Barham (2013) document large positive effects of electrification in Brazil
due to broad-based improvements in labor productivity. They instrument electrification by
simulating a hypothetical power grid roll-out driven solely by geographic factors. Their estimates
are not robust to repeated runs of the simulation, which in most cases lead to weak instruments.
Furthermore, removing coding errors turns the main outcomes and most originally identified
mechanisms statistically insignificant in most of the repeated runs, even when using a specification
proposed in a corrigendum published by the original authors.
