Ports have become increasingly capital intensive. Economies of scale have led to larger, more specialized ships, and, competition between ports has started to grow. As a result, governments are reorganizing the way ports are run, and permitting more private ownership, and service delivery....

In 1989, the Argentine government initiated rapid privatization of infrastructure services-mainly gas, telecoms, electricity generation and transmission, and water and electricity distribution in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area. The author reviews the performance of the agencies set up to...

Brazil's electricity sector is made up of more than sixty-five, mostly vertically integrated, federally- and state-owned monopolies. The most pressing problems in the sector are excessive operational costs and large investment needs. Both of these problems can be addressed through more...

Port reforms in Argentina have sought to deregulate, decentralize, and privatize. And they have sought to introduce competition not only among ports but also for the ports --by inviting operators to bid for port concessions-- and within the ports-- by dividing large ports into terminals and...

Argentina began to concession its intercity highways and the access roads to Buenos Aires in the early 1990s. It first offered the intercity highways for competitive bids, setting the terms, the tolls, and the service levels and basing bid selection primarily on the rental offered for the...

In the early 1990s, Argentina vertically separated and privatized most of its electricity industry. Transmission and distribution, considered natural monopolies, were sold by concession. The main objectives of the reforms were efficient pricing and production levels in the short term and enough...

The Argentine government privatized the water and sewerage services in greater Buenos Aires by concession. The utility was sold as a single monopoly business, but bidders had to compete for the right to provide service at the lowest price. Contractual targets for service coverage implied...

Argentina privatized many of its railway services by concession contract during the early 1990s. The reforms have been remarkable for their speed and innovation - despite the complexity of the issues and the lack of "off-the-shelf" models to follow at the time. The overall result has been...