Governments often regulate not only the overall level of prices charged by infrastructure firms but also the relationship between prices for different services or customers. Prices can differ among different types of customers, even when no customers can be said to be subsidizing another, for...

Brazil's electricity sector is made up of more than sixty-five, mostly vertically integrated, federally- and state-owned monopolies. The most pressing problems in the sector are excessive operational costs and large investment needs. Both of these problems can be addressed through more...

The author explains the financial and contractual structure of the main financial instruments offered by the Bank Group-the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development Association, the International Finance Corporation, and the Multilateral Investment...

If privatizing network industries is to bring lasting public benefits, governments should also attempt to introduce competition. The scope for such competition is growing with increasing deregulation and technological innovation. As technology continues to improve, the use of "smart...

The government of Trinidad and Tobago has adopted a two-phased approach to privatizing its water services. In the first phase, a preconcession, or enhanced management contract, was recently awarded through a competitive bidding process. After three to five years, in the second phase, this...

Port reforms in Argentina have sought to deregulate, decentralize, and privatize. And they have sought to introduce competition not only among ports but also for the ports --by inviting operators to bid for port concessions-- and within the ports-- by dividing large ports into terminals and...

Argentina began to concession its intercity highways and the access roads to Buenos Aires in the early 1990s. It first offered the intercity highways for competitive bids, setting the terms, the tolls, and the service levels and basing bid selection primarily on the rental offered for the...

Regulators concerned about the costs of bank insolvency and of systemic risk arising from the volatility of bank trading portfolios have developed three different approaches to setting risk-based minimum capital adequacy standards for market risk. The author evaluates those three...

The authors propose a number of privatization rules to ensure that management will improve after privatization. Governments should ensure that the privatized sector has several firms operating in industries that are local natural monopolies, so that if one operator goes bankrupt, another can...

New Zealand has adopted a system of market-based bank regulation to try to reduce moral hazard and fiscal risk for the government. The system introduces new elements of public disclosure and enhanced director responsibility. Although the central bank still monitors banks, it now uses only...