La existencia de empresas públicas es un fenómeno habitual y económicamente significativo en la mayoría de los países. En este trabajo se analiza la existencia de empresas estatales en la región y en Uruguay, considerándose los motivos para su creación; las propuestas de reforma surgidas...

In 2002, Argentina devalued its currency and froze public utility rates thus breaching the guarantees granted to investors the decade before. Those guarantees had lowered investors' cost of capital by substantially reducing expropriation risk. This paper looks into the governance structure...

The article discusses the possible cost savings of contracting out refuse collection in the Netherlands. According to foreign econometric studies, contracting out refuse collection leads to cost savings of approximately 20%. Our findings indicate that similar cost savings apply to the...

Incentive regulation is now an important regulatory tool in the telecommunications industry in the USA. The issue explored here is whether incentive regulation has resulted in an increase in productive efficiency. After providing an overview of the nature of incentive regulation, the methodology...

This paper finds that coherent regulatory policies can boost investment in network industries of OECD economies. Rate-of-return regulation is generally thought to result in overinvestment, while incentive regulation is believed to entail underinvestment. Yet, previous empirical work has...

The EU regulatory framework for e-communications was adopted by the European Parliament and the Council in 2002, and became applicable from 2003. It has three primary objectives: (1) to promote competition; (2) to develop the single market; and (3) to promote citizens' rights. The European...

The economics of federalism is a broad discipline with more than five decades of experience. It may shed light on how regulatory jurisdiction is allocated in EU electricity and telecommunications markets. Specifically, this paper assesses the evolution of reform up to and including the third EU...

This article starts by surveying the literature on economic federalism and relating it to network industries. Some new developments (which focus on the role of inter-jurisdictional externalities and multiple objectives) are then added and used to analyze regulatory arrangements in...

The reform of the UK utilities over the last fifteen years has laid considerable emphasis on the incentive properties both of private ownership and the regulation of the privatized industries which has followed. This paper reviews the arguments for such policy, and describes the use of...

With the use of a laboratory experiment, we show the effects of co-investments on coverage, competition and price collusion in regulated network industries. On the one hand, co-investments turn out not to be a significant driver of new infrastructure investments beyond the level achieved by...