Efforts to reform utilities can affect poor households in varied, often complex, ways, but it is by no means certain that such reform will hurt vulnerable households. Many myths have been perpetuated in discussions of utility reform - and in many cases poor households have benefited from reform....

The authors make the case for the return of regulation in the organization of urban bus services in developing countries. During the past three decades urban public transport policy has gone through several phases. The 1980s and 1990s were characterized by liberalization of the sector from...

Efforts to reform utilities can affect poor households in varied, often complex, ways, but it is by no means certain that such reform will hurt vulnerable households. Many myths have been perpetuated in discussions of utility reform - and in many cases poor households have benefited from reform....

In designing a rational scheme for subsidizing water services, it is important to support the choice of design parameters with empirical analysis that stimulates the impact of subsidy options on the target population. Otherwise, there is little guarantee that the subsidy program will meet its...

As an alternative to traditional subsidy schemes in utility sectors, direct subsidy programs have several advantages: they are transparent, they are explicit, and they minimize distortions of the behavior of both the utility, and the customers. At the same time, defining practical eligibility...

The domestic energy markets in the United Kingdom are still in a process of structural change. Earlier this year, limited competition for the supply of household domestic gas was introduced, with full-scale competition expected to develop in the next few years. Competition for the supply of...

To increase investment in infrastructure, in the early 1990s Chile's government introduced private capital into the transport infrastructure sector, covering roads and highways, bridges, tunnels, and airports. The chosen mechanism: a concession scheme through which private firms would finance...

Subsidy policies on public urban transport have been adopted ubiquitously. In both developed and developing countries, subsidies are implemented to make transport more affordable. Despite their widespread implementation, there are virtually no quantitative assessments of their distributional...