Critics of globalization claim that foreign ownership of privatized firms is linked to negative post-privatization labor outcomes, such as more firing and less hiring. This paper uses new firm-level data for a cross section of countries to test this idea and provides evidence that foreign...

This benchmarking index evaluates the legal, regulatory and operating environments for public-private partnerships in transport and water infrastructure for 19 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The analysis and scores in the model provide a comparable assesssment of individual countries'...

The incomplete privatization of the electric sector in Peru provides a unique scenario for evaluating the impact of public versus private provision. The results in this paper suggest that management of electricity firms by the private sector leads to a significant improvement in the quality of...

A joint production between the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, this report aims at helping policymakers and their advisers to better understand some of the most important and difficult issues related to the design, award, implementation, monitoring, and modification of...

This report examines the problems of theft, nonpayment and political opportunism in the aftermath of privatization by considering the recent experiences of four private utilities in Latin America that operate in water and sanitation, and electricity supply. The basis for the analysis that...

During the last decade, Latin American countries have brought about important reforms in infrastructure services based both on private sector participation for enhancing internal efficiency and competition for increasing consumer welfare. Infrastructure services have evolved from monopoly and...

This paper studies the effects of water sector privatization on consumers' welfare in 46 municipalities in Colombia. The paper evaluates the impact of privatization on access, price, and quality of water as well as health outcomes using differences-in-differences methodology with variation...

The present work summarizes a set of reports which have had the aim of diagnosing the civil service systems of seventeen countries: Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago,...

This paper uses new data on fiscal transparency for a cross-section of countries; these data possess several advantages. First, the data are based on in-depth reports using a standardized methodology and protocol. Second, this study covers 82 countries, more than previous comparable studies....