"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...

"This paper uses a new dataset, "WATSAN," of private sector participation (PSP) projects for water and sanitation in developing countries to examine the determinants of the number of projects signed for each country between 1990 and 2004. The new dataset improves on existing sources, in...

In the early 1990s Mexico City's Federal District (the D.F.) initiated a series of service contracts with four operators in the private sector, each to be implemented in three stages over ten years. The idea was to introduce competitive pressures and to find out if a "gradualist" aaproach would...

"Introducing private sector participation (PSP) into the water and sewerage sectors in developing countries is difficult and controversial. Empirical studies on its effects are scant and generally inconclusive. Case studies tend to find improvements in the sector following privatization, but...

"The paper provides a first systematic, comprehensive benchmarking of South Africa's infrastructure performance in four major sectors--electricity, water and sanitation, information and communication technology, and transportation--against the relevant group of comparator countries using a new...