The literature on the theory of the firm is rich in theoretical and practical insights. The key messages in this overview are the following: (a) the modern theory of the firm provides many insights into political organization, for political jurisdictions can be viewed as pseudo-firms that...

The authors assess the effects of private capital and independent regulatory agencies on telecommunications performance by using cross-country panel data from 1990 to 2003. In general, they find that having independent regulatory agencies positively affects affordability and labor productivity,...

Subsidies in Brazil essentially serve three purposes: (i) if assigned to the right level of government, they could reinforce the effectiveness of pollution taxes in reducing pollution; (ii) they offer an opportunity foradditional combinations of instruments and hence more flexibility in dealing...

Twenty years ago, as the United Kingdom was getting ready to launch the privatization of its public services, Professor Littlechild developed and operationalized the concept of price caps as a regulatory regime to control for residual monopoly conditions in those services. Ten years later, Latin...

The authors assess the macroeconomic and distributional effects of the privatization that Argentina began in 1989 in gas, electricity, telecommunications, and water and sanitation. Using a computable general equilibrium model, they track the effects of the changes observed between 1993, the...

To utilize public resources efficiently, it is required to take full advantage of competition in public procurement auctions. Joint bidding practices are one of the possible ways of facilitating auction competition. In theory, there are pros and cons. It may enable firms to pool their financial...

This paper uses a computable general equilibrium (CGE) micro-simulation model to explore the distributional and poverty-related effects of price reform in the electricity sector of Mali, a poor country in West Africa. In the first part of the paper we analyse the distribution of electricity in...

This paper shows how high bargaining power for firms and search costs in the labor market can impede a switch towards new, more competitive economic activities. This is because search costs drive the quality of the horizontal matching between worker types and the old and new sectors of the...

Infrastructure and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa analyzes the extent to which, how, and how fast the infrastructure needs of the poor have been met in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Author Antonio Estache: Antonio Estache is Professor of Economics at Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and a...