This paper evaluates regulation by contract in public-private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure services. Although the benefits of competition for the market and of regulatory contracts are widely acknowledged, the literature indentifies several failures in their design. These ‘flaws' are...

This article examines how risk is reflected in infrastructure regulatory contracts, using examples from water utilities to illustrate key points. Partnerships between public and private sectors in capital intensive network services require risks to be assigned to the contractual party that is...

This paper updates the literature on water utility benchmarking studies carried out worldwide, focusing on scale and scope economies. Using meta-regression analysis, the study investigates which variables from published studies influence these economies. Our analysis led to several conclusions....

This paper performs a literature update of quantitative studies of water and sanitation services (WSS). There are 190 studies which use cost or production functions to evaluate the performance of WSS utilities. The studies examine (1) the scale, scope or density economies of utilities in a...

This paper analyses regulation by contract in public-private partnerships (PPPs) for infrastructure services. Although the benefits of competition for the market and subsequent regulatory contracts are recognised, the literature also identifies contract design failures. When considering these...

Small Island Developing states (SIDs) present challenges for analysts and policy-makers attempting to strengthen island-nation infrastructure. This study applies lessons to one SID to illustrate how benchmarking can improve the performance of water utilities. The archipelago-nation of Cape Verde...