One important determinant of the speed and success of transition will be the efficiency of transformation and development of the infrastructure sectors. A great deal of attention has been paid to issues such as privatisation, restructuring, user prices, and terms of access in these sectors,...

With the passing of the Economic Emergency Act in January 2002 which froze all public utility rates and simultaneously devalued the local currency, Argentina entered a period of systematic breaches of the guarantees granted by the government to public utility investors in the early nineties....

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of market-oriented institutional reforms in German network industries. A disaggregated approach is chosen, which differentiates between network services, infrastructure management and network infrastructure. The gradual opening of network...

This paper carries out an overview of the recent history of privatisation in Spain. At this point, the paper focuses on the analysis of the economic, financial and political objectives pursued by successive Spanish Administrations. It is argued that privatisation policy has been inconsistent...

This paper provides evidence that ownership and organization matters for the efficiency of provision of public services. In particular, we find that pure private ownership is more efficient than pure public ownership, followed by mixed ownership. The delegation of management in different legal...

The paper introduces insights into a methodology for developing regulation applicable to networked industries. Following telecommunications, the energy industry is most apt to undergo significant structural and regulatory reforms as a function technological advancement. The application of this...

France lived through a long period of nationalization until the early 1980s, when nearly all the largest industrial firms as well as all the banks and public services were state-owned. Since then, a series of privatization moves have caused the state sector to shrink. Public services present a...

Until the reforms in the early 1990s, Argentina's public services were sick. Rationing in level and quality were the norm. Privatization, among the many reforms introduced by the Menem administration, felt then as a cure. Argentina was the 'poster boy' of privatization in the world. For the last...