"Subsidies to residential utility customers are popular among policymakers, utility managers, and utility customers alike, but they are nonetheless the subject of much controversy. Utility subsidies are seen as a way to help make utility service affordable for poor households and as an...

"The authors review a number of studies on the effectiveness of utility regulatory agency and governance arrangements for the electricity industry, particularly for developing countries. They discuss governance criteria and their measurement, both legal frameworks and surveys of regulatory...

"Da Silva, Estache, and Jarvela describe the evolution of the financing structure of regulated privatized utilities and transport companies. To do so, they rely on a sample of 121 utilities distributed over 16 countries, and 23 transport infrastructure operators and 23 transport services...

International policies to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) envisage the creation of financial incentive mechanisms that reward forest protection efforts and adequately compensate those actors that face new costs. In order for REDD+ to achieve these objectives,...

Investment commitments to new infrastructure projects with private participation (PPI projects) reaching closure in developing countries fell by 25 percent in the first quarter of 2010 compared with the same quarter of 2009. The absence of unusually large projects (US$4 billion or more), such as...

This review sheds some light on recent private participation in infrastructure (PPI) activity, the short-term impact of the financial crisis and its aftermath. Compared with the previous update on the impact of the crisis, this note incorporates two improvements: a larger sample size (1,080...

Drawing on the World Bank's Private Participation in Infrastructure Project Database, this Note provides an overview of private activity in infrastructure in developing countries between 1990 and 2000. Three main trends characterized that decade: Private activity in infrastructure grew each year...

This Note looks at systems some governments have used to transform unsolicited proposals for private infrastructure projects into competitively tendered projects. It focuses on the policies that Chile, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and South Africa have adopted for managing such...