Between 2000 and 2005 infrastructure made an important contribution of 1.6 percentage points to Benin's improved per capita growth performance, which was the highest among West African countries during the period. Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to that of the region's...

Infrastructure made a net contribution of around 1 percentage point to Angola's improved per capita growth performance in recent years, despite unreliable power supplies and poor roads, which each holding back growth by 0.2 percentage points. Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to...

The authors analyze the impact of privatization on the performance of 116 electric utilities in 10 Latin American countries. The analysis makes a number of contributions to the literature on changes in infrastructure ownership. First, this is the first systemic analysis of the impact of...

Argentina was a pioneer of infrastructure reform in the early 1990s. The social dimension of infrastructure services was typically overlooked in the reform process. However, social sensitivities often resurfaced in the years that followed, leading to a series of ad hoc social policy measures...

Subsidies to residential utility customers are popular among policymakers, utility managers, and utility customers alike, but they are nonetheless the subject of much controversy. Utility subsidies are seen as a way to help make utility service affordable for poor households and as an...

In designing a rational scheme for subsidizing water services, it is important to support the choice of design parameters with empirical analysis that stimulates the impact of subsidy options on the target population. Otherwise, there is little guarantee that the subsidy program will meet its...

A majority of sub-Saharan Africa’s population is not connected to electricity and piped water networks, and even in urban areas coverage is low. Lack of network coverage may be due to demand or supply-side factors. Some households may live in areas where access to piped water and electricity...

As an alternative to traditional subsidy schemes in utility sectors, direct subsidy programs have several advantages: they are transparent, they are explicit, and they minimize distortions of the behavior of both the utility, and the customers. At the same time, defining practical eligibility...