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In this paper, we discuss the beginning of Rwanda's current work on natural capital accounts. Many developing countries began similar work on environmental satellite accounts in the 1990s and early 2000s, only to abandon them a few years later when the initial political interest waned. The question arises, therefore, as to whether renewed interest in these accounts has the potential to have a longer-lasting impact on national accounting practices. In Rwanda's case, the decision was to begin satellite accounting work by focusing on resources where key economic trade-offs between different uses had already begun to be identified by policymakers, and where the gathering of economic statistics had already been improved as a result. It seems likely that this approach could lead to more durable satellite accounts, and that a similar approach would be feasible in many other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We describe a public good experiment, a type of economic experiment commonly used to examine feelings of prosociality—that is, behaviour which is positive, helpful and intended to promote social acceptance and friendship—and community cohesion, carried out in Rwanda. Contributions in different parts of the country are affected by the local intensity of the 1994 genocide, with more generous contributions being made in areas where violence was greater. This supports earlier research indicating that conflict experience leads to greater prosociality. However, we also find that people who have not, themselves, been targets of violence give lower contributions than people who have. The considerable group‐related and regional differences in social behaviour may have implications for the country's policies to deal with social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the determinants of rental values in urban housing markets in Kigali, Rwanda. In particular, we study the value of access to piped water; due to the high costs associated with installing new piped connections, renting a property with an existing connection is often the only way for low income households to access piped water. Our results indicate that extending the piped network to a new house will in many cases raise the rental value of the house enough to pay for the cost of installing the new connection in less than two years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]