"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...

"In determining domestic water prices, policy makers often need to use information about the demand side rather than only relying on information about the supply side. Household surveys have frequently been employed to collect demand-side information. This paper presents a multiple bounded...

"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...

"Competition in public procurement auctions in the water supply and sanitation sector is largely limited. This is partly because of high technical complexity and partly because of auction design flaws. The division of lot contracts is an important policy choice for auctioneers to achieve...

"In many countries water supply is a service that is seriously underpriced, especially for residential consumers. This has led to a call for setting cost recovery policies to ensure that the tariffs charged for water supply cover the full cost of providing for the service. Yet, the question...

"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...

"China has experienced a wide-scale and rapid transformation from an agricultural based economy to the manufacturing workshop of the world. The associated relocation of the population from relatively low density rural areas to very high density urban areas is having a significant impact on the...