Person:
van den Berg, Caroline

Global Practice on Water
Profile Picture
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Water economics, Public finance, Monitoring and evaluation
Degrees
ORCID
0000-0002-1770-6830
Departments
Global Practice on Water
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated: January 31, 2023
Biography
Caroline van den Berg is working as a Lead Water Economist in the World Bank’s Global Water Practice, focusing mostly on the economics of water supply, wastewater, sanitation and irrigation water services.  She has extensive experience in the preparation and implementation of investment and development policy operations, and in applied research projects – with a work experience that extends over more than 40 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.   She works on cost-benefit analysis, financial analysis, monitoring and evaluation, benchmarking of utilities, regulation and pricing, energy efficiency in water projects and public finance mostly in relation to the water sector.  She has published regularly in academic journals.  Prior to joining the World Bank, she was a research economist, financial analyst and project economist in the private sector. She earned her M.A. in macroeconomics from the Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands and a Ph.D. in spatial sciences from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). 

Filters

20061
Browse document type tree
Reset filters

Settings

Statistics
Citations
Topic: Environmental Economics and Policies × Author: Van Houtven, George ×

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    The Use of Willingness to Pay Experiments : Estimating Demand for Piped Water Connections in Sri Lanka
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-01) Pattanayak, Subhrendu K.; van den Berg, Caroline; Yang, Jui-Chen; Van Houtven, George
    The authors show how willingness to pay surveys can be used to gauge household demand for improved network water and sanitation services. They do this by presenting a case-study from Sri Lanka, where they surveyed approximately 1,800 households in 2003. Using multivariate regression, they show that a complex combination of factors drives demand for service improvements. While poverty and costs are found to be key determinants of demand, the authors also find that location, self-provision, and perceptions matter as well, and that subsets of these factors matter differently for subsamples of the population. To evaluate the policy implications of the demand analysis, they use the model to estimate uptake rates of improved service under various scenarios-demand in subgroups, the institutional decision to rely on private sector provision, and various financial incentives targeted to the poor. The simulations show that in this particular environment in Sri Lanka, demand for piped water services is low, and that it is unlikely that under the present circumstances the goal of nearly universal piped water coverage is going to be achieved. Policy instruments, such as subsidization of connection fees, could be used to increase demand for piped water, but it is unclear whether the benefits of the use of such policies would outweigh the costs.