Introducing private sector participation (PSP) into the water and sewerage sectors in developing countries is difficult and controversial. Empirical studies on its effects are scant and generally inconclusive. Case studies tend to find improvements in the sector following privatization, but they...

Introducing private sector participation (PSP) into the water and sewerage sectors is difficult and controversial. Empirical studies on its effects are scant and generally inconclusive. Case studies tend to find improvements following privatisation, but they suffer from selection bias and it is...

This paper exploits exogenous variation in the natural topography of the United States to estimate the causal impact of inter-jurisdictional competition on income growth. We find that doubling the number of county governments in a metropolitan area leads to a 17% increase in the average annual...

What drives governments with similar revenues to provide very different amounts of goods with private sector substitutes? Education is a prime example. I use exogenous shocks to Brazilian municipalities' revenue during 1995–2008 generated by non-linearities in federal transfer laws to...

Can private sector participation (PSP) in the piped water sector improve child health? I use child-level data from 39 African countries during 1986–2010 to show that PSP decreases diarrhea among urban-dwelling, under-five children by 2.6 percentage points, or 16% of its mean prevalence....

This report draws deeply on the extraordinary efforts and innovations demonstrated by early child development policy makers around Brazil. This report draws on background papers about innovations in early child education in Rio de Janeiro and in caregiver training and supervision in two...

This article discusses the potential of private sector participation (PSP) to improve the urban water supply in South Asia. I first provide background on the literature linking a safe and adequate water supply with malnutrition, morbidity, and mortality. To better understand the selection...

What drives governments with similar revenues to publicly provide very different amounts of goods for which private substitutes are available? Key examples are education and health care. This paper compares spending by Brazilian municipalities on pre-primary education -- a good that is also...