The efficiency and productivity of Colombia's urban system will be a key determinant in the ability of the country to transition from a middle income to a higher-income economy. Colombia, as with most Latin American countries, has experienced positive growth rates in the past few years,...

This paper provides an overview of the privatization of the Russian coal industry. It reviews the salient aspects of the Government's privatization policy as it evolved over the years, and looks at the reasons for the successes and the pitfalls encountered along the way. Specific procedures and...

In 1996 Ghana privatized its incumbent telecommunications firm by selling 30 percent of Ghana Telecom to Telekom Malaysia, licensing a second network operator, and allowing multiple mobile firms to enter the market. The reforms yielded mixed results. Landline telephone penetration increased...

The case in Mexico City offered an opportunity to observe the advantages, and disadvantages of gradualist reform. Unfortunately, the authors find that the long-term nature of an incremental approach does not match well with the generally shorter-term horizons of elected politicians. Difficult...

Infrastructure industries-including telecommunications, electricity, water, and gas-underwent massive structural changes in the 1990s. During that decade, hundreds of privatization transactions valued at billions of dollars were completed in these sectors in developing and transition economies....

The paper documents the case of Uganda's telecommunications reform. Uganda is one of only two countries in Africa that decided to privatize telecommunications in a competitive framework by selling a second national operator license. The authors find that Uganda did not sacrifice significant...

We construct comprehensive and consistent datasets on telecommunications and electricity regulations in developing countries through extensive surveys of regulators. The database of telecommunications regulations includes 178 variables on regulatory governance and content in 45 countries. The...

Privatization of state-owned assets was a central economic reform of the 1980s and 1990s. Lack of data has made it impossible to judge the extent to which privatization has diminished the importance of state ownership in the economy or changed the performance of state-owned enterprises. This...

The debate on whether natural disasters cause significant macroeconomic impacts and indeed hinder development is ongoing. Most analyses along these lines have focused on impacts on gross domestic product. This paper looks beyond this standard national accounting aggregate, and examines whether...