Reformulating tariff and subsidy policies is central to improving water and sanitation services in developing countries. The traditional model of state enterprise service provision, coupled with residential tariffs set well below the cost of service, has generally delivered unsatisfactory...

An important infrastructure policy issue for rapidly growing cities in developing countries is how to raise fiscal revenues to finance basic services in a fair and efficient manner. This paper applies hedonic analysis that explicitly accounts for spatial spillovers to derive the value of...

What economic and political factors have made cost recovery for rural water systems so difficult in the Nsuuka district of Anambra State? This paper found that households in the region do not want to pay for water in advance or commit themselves to a fixed monthly payment for water. They want...

Private sector involvement and user participation in water resource management are not new, say the authors. They give examples that demonstrate how willing users and the private sector are able to improve water use and play a larger role in water resources management. User participation and...

To foster economic efficiency, says the author, rights to water resources must be both secure and flexible. Designing institutions to deal with the physical peculiarities of water in a way that establishes sensible incentives and efficient resource use is complicated. Basically, establishing...

This cross-country evaluation of institutional responses to problems in the water sector shows that changes in the nature of water problems have changed the development paradigm underlying water institutions. There is increasing recognition of how decentralized allocation mechanisms can...

As water scarcity and population pressures increase, more countries are adopting water pricing mechanisms, as their primary means of regulating the consumption of irrigation water. The way to allocate water efficiently is to"get the prices right", but how to accomplish this is open to debate....

In the early 2000s, the Government of Sri Lanka considered engaging private sector operators to manage water and sewerage services in two separate service areas: one in the town of Negombo (north of Colombo), and one stretching along the coastal strip (south from Colombo) from the towns of...

China has experienced a wide-scale and rapid transformation from an agricultural based economy to the manufacturing workshop of the world. The associated relocation of the population from relatively low density rural areas to very high density urban areas is having a significant impact on the...

In large parts of the world, a lack of home tap water burdens households as the water must be brought to the house from outside, at great expense in terms of effort and time. This paper studies how such costs affect girls'schooling in Ghana, with an analysis based on four rounds of the...