Regulating infrastructure utilities can be extremely complex and fraught with risks of political interference and capture by interest groups, especially in countries with little tradition of politically independent government agencies. To deal with these challenges, policymakers and regulators...

Access to basic services plays an important role in both individual well-being and a country's economic development. For this reason, general availability of these services to citizens, regardless of income level and geographical location, has generally been viewed as an important public policy...

As part of its technical assistance initiative to develop (and strengthen) the regulatory framework for business, the single window system to stimulate the development of the private sector, the World Bank commissioned ICRA Management Consulting Services Limited (IMaCS) to conduct a detailed...

"The author studies annuity rates in Chile and relates them with industry competition. He finds (1) that annuity insurance companies paying higher broker commissions paid lower annuity rates; and (2) a structural break of the long-run elasticity of annuity rates to the risk-free rate in 2001....

Competition can drive productivity growth in Kosovo, especially in the context of the post-Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recovery. As the economy rebuilds, it is key that markets function smoothly, and that anticompetitive firm behavior or government intervention do not constrain the path...

"The authors assess the effects of private capital and independent regulatory agencies on telecommunications performance by using cross-country panel data from 1990 to 2003. In general, they find that having independent regulatory agencies positively affects affordability and labor productivity,...