We analyze the impact of alternative regulatory regimes on the labor productivity of electricity distribution firms in Latin America. We find that (i) incentive-based regimes lead to higher labor productivity than rate-of-return regulation, and (ii) privatized firms operating under rate of...

Infrastructure has particular challenges in public procurement, because it is highly complex and customized and often requires economic, political and social considerations from a long time horizon. To deliver public infrastructure services to citizens or taxpayers, there are a series of...

The authors explore the relation between the establishment of a regulatory agency and the performance of the electricity sector. The authors exploit a unique dataset comprising firm-level information on a representative sample of 220 electric utilities from 51 development and transition...

A decade long experience shows that monitoring the performance of public and private monopolies in South America is proving to be the hard part of the reform process. The operators who control most of the information needed for regulatory purposes have little interest in volunteering their...

July 1999 - Efficiency indicators can be useful to regulators assessing the efficiency of an operation and the wedge between tariff and minimum costs. They allow regulators to control for factors over which the operators have no control (such as diversity of water sources, or water quality or...

"Estache and Rossi bring new empirical evidence on the impact of the choice of ownership and regulatory regime on firms' productivity and prices paid by consumers. They collect the evidence from a sample of electricity distribution companies in Latin America. The authors rely on estimations of...

Public infrastructure has long been faced with difficulty in financing. Available public resources are often limited in many countries. Competitive bidding in public procurement systems is an important instrument to contain the public investment costs. But competition is often limited in the...

Public procurement is a dynamic process involving vendors, contractors and procuring agencies. Even before submitting bids, competition among contractors may already have started. Given the nature of public work and expected strategies of rivals, some firms decide to enter the market, but others...

In reviewing contracts, establishing price limits, or arbitrating conflicts, regulatory agencies and policy advisors face significant information asymmetry in determining the appropriate allowed rate of return, or discount rate. The information gap is especially important in determining the...

This paper develops a model to analyze the impacts of asymmetric information on optimal universal service policy in the public utilities of developing countries. Optimal universal service policy is implemented using two regulatory instruments: pricing and network investment. Under discriminatory...