As utility services expand throughout the developing world, providers must grapple with how to set prices to recover average costs. Data from a multiyear randomised pricing experiment among nearly 1,500 recently connected piped water customers in Vietnam reveal month-to-month demand persistence. Based on structural demand estimation, we document how endogenous preferences, if unaccounted for, can lead to low take-up and thereby threaten the financial viability of the new water utility. We also show that such demand persistence calls for pricing schemes that defer lump-sum payment, effectively allowing future consumers to subsidise their present selves.

Global terrorist organizations attract radicalized individuals across borders and constitute a threat for both sending and receiving countries. We use unique personnel records from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Daesh) to show that unemployment in sending countries is associated with the number of transnational terrorist recruits from these countries. The relationship is spatially heterogeneous, which is most plausibly attributable to travel costs. We argue that poor labor market opportunities generally push more individuals to join terrorist organizations, but at the same time, limit their ability to do so when longer travel distances imply higher travel costs.