This paper provides an overview of the major current debates on infrastructure policy. It reviews the evidence on the macroeconomic significance of the sector in terms of growth and poverty alleviation. It also discusses the major institutional debates, including the relative comparative...

The authors analyze the determinants of the efficiency levels reached by twenty one African water utilities. They assess efficiency through the estimation of a production frontier for the sector in Africa. The efficiency estimates confirm much of the common perceptions from partial productivity...

Estache and Rossi estimate a stochastic costs frontier for a sample of Asian and Pacific water companies, comparing the performance of public and privatized companies based on detailed firm-specific information published by the Asian Development Bank in 1997. They find private operators of water...

In the next 10 years or so, the infrastructure sector has the potential to generate significant employment. This paper estimates annual job creation of about 2.0 million in direct jobs and 2.5 million in direct, indirect and induced infrastructure-related jobs just by meeting the infrastructure...

The authors bring new empirical evidence on the impact of the choice of ownership and regulatory regime on firms'productivity and prices paid by consumers. They collect the evidence from a sample of electricity distribution companies in Latin America. The authors rely on estimations of labor and...

Almost a decade after Argentina began privatizing its railways, resolution of conflicts between regulators, users, and operators continues to take longer, and to be more difficult, than expected. The authors contend that many of these conflicts arose because there are no rules for interactions...

Recent developments in emerging financial markets have dramatically changed the appetite for (and terms of) transport infrastructure projects. As a result of defaults in Asia and Russia and devaluations in Asia, Brazil, and Russia, political and currency and exchange risk premia have increased...

Economists often characterize the regulation of monopolies as a"game"(between the regulator and the service provider) in which the two players do not share the same information. The regulator is assumed to have poorer information than the service provider about the scope of future efficiency...

The authors provide empirical evidence on the impact that private participation in infrastructure has had on key macroeconomic variables in a sample of 21 Latin American countries from 1985-98. Specifically, they look at the effects on GDP per capita, current public expenditures, public...

One of the most complex challenges of infrastructure privatization is its impact on employment. Often (but not always) private operators'main approach to cost-cutting is labor reduction. Private operators cannot afford the low levels of labor productivity typical in public companies if they are...