As populations expand and make various uses of water, its growing scarcity becomes a serious issue in developing countries such as Bangladesh. Water can no longer be considered a totally free resource and plans must be developed for its efficient use through better management and rules that...

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 most countries, the state owns the water and hydraulic infrastructure, and public officials decide who gets water rights, how the water is to be used, and how much will be charged for its use. The authors of this paper compare administered systems of water allocation with a system of tradable...

Estache and Rossi estimate a stochastic costs frontier for a sample of Asian and Pacific water companies, comparing the performance of public and privatized companies based on detailed firm-specific information published by the Asian Development Bank in 1997. They find private operators of water...

The signing of a concession contract for the Buenos Aires water and sanitation system in December 1992, attracted worldwide attention, and caused considerable controversy in Argentina. It was one of the world's largest concessions, but the case was also interesting for other reasons. The...

The case in Mexico City offered an opportunity to observe the advantages, and disadvantages of gradualist reform. Unfortunately, the authors find that the long-term nature of an incremental approach does not match well with the generally shorter-term horizons of elected politicians. Difficult...

This paper provides an overview of approaches to the economic regulation of piped water supply and sewerage systems. The discussion emphasizes the particular importance that quality issues take on in water systems relative to any other infrastructure sector. Water quality is obviously important...

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...

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...