This paper reviews the book “Infrastructure and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa” by Antonio Estache and Quentin Wodon. The authors summarize the political debate on infrastructure policy in Africa in a very compelling and knowledgeable way and make a convincing case for pro-poor subsidies....

This paper compares water and sanitation services in municipalities that entered into a concession arrangement with a private operator versus those in a comparable control group of municipalities that continued with a public operator, and we explore five variables of interest: (i) water coverage;...

This paper provides a 'back-of-the-envelope' assessment of the efficiency effects of the reforms of the water sector in Argentina. Private operators are now key players in 15 of Argentina's provinces. While all have adopted incentive based regulatory regimes which require estimates of economic...

In 1997 the government of the Philippines privatised the water services in the Manila Metropolitan Area (covering approximately 11 million people) by granting two large concession areas to consortia of international water companies and local partners. This case study tracks the successful...

This paper analyses the foundations of efficient-firm regulation (implemented in Chile for almost two decades), and the formulas that are used to set the prices of water/sanitation companies, electric power distributors and the dominant phone companies. We show that efficient-firm regulation...

In most developed countries, the provision of water is organized at a local level. The costs and tariffs vary significantly, even between adjacent water utilities. Such heterogeneity is an obvious indication of the sectors overall inefficiency and stresses a need for institutional adjustments....