"Given the relatively small segment of the population that faces genuine affordability problems in Latin America, there appears to be a promising case for using targeted subsidies to reconcile the cost recovery objective with social protection concerns. Social tariff schemes of various kinds are...

"The author first describes those features of the electricity supply industry that make a prospective market monitoring process essential to a well-functioning wholesale market. Some of these features are shared with the securities industry, although the technology of electricity production and...

In the second half of the 1980s, several electricity companies in developed countries incorporated the automation of the reads of the consumption meters installed in their customers' premises. Adoption of that approach was driven in all the cases by the need to lower the significant costs of...

This report provides detailed knowledge on firm-level technology sophistication in Poland, and, by identifying the main barriers and drivers to adoption, it delivers evidence-based policy recommendations to foster technology adoption across different firms and sectors. The analysis based on the...

"Globalization brings opportunities and pressures for domestic firms in emerging markets to innovate and improve their competitive position. Using data on firms in 27 transition economies, the authors test for the effects of globalization through the impact of increased competition and foreign...

"The paper evaluates the effects of privatization in the post-communist economies and China. In post-communist economies privatization to foreign owners results in a rapid improvement in performance of firms, while performance effects of privatization to domestic owners are less impressive and...

"This paper uses firm-level data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys to study the process of convergence of transition countries with developed market economies. The study focuses on competition and market structure, finance and the structure of lending to firms, and...