Beginning in the late 1980s many developing countries turned to the private sector to provide basic infrastructure and utility services, such as highways, railroads, water, wastewater, electricity, gas, and telecommunications. Recent studies suggest that private involvement often benefited...

Mexico's private toll road program of 1989-1994 is famous both as one of the first and the most ambitious highway privatization programs among the developing countries and as one of the most dramatic failures. In just five years Mexico awarded 52 concessions totaling over 5300 km of toll...

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Monopoly as a Contracting Problem -- 2. The Choice of Regulatory Strategy -- I Regulatory Politics and Dynamics -- 3. The Behavior of Regulatory Agencies -- 4. Capture and Instability: Sri Lanka's Buses and U.S. Telephones -- 5. Incompleteness and Its...