This paper concerns the relationship between refuse collection contract costs and the number of bidders for a sample of English local authorities. Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) of blue collar services such as refuse collection and street cleaning was introduced in the UK by the Local...

Subsidy policies on public urban transport have been adopted ubiquitously. In both developed and developing countries, subsidies are implemented to make transport more affordable. Despite their widespread implementation, there are virtually no quantitative assessments of their distributional...

Analysis of two water subsidy schemes a means tested subsidy in Chile and a geographically targeted subsidy in Colombia shows that the means-tested system is better able to identify poor households than the geographically targeted scheme. However, the overall distributive impact of both schemes...

Efforts to reform utilities can affect poor households in varied, often complex, ways, but it is by no means certain that such reform will hurt vulnerable households. Many myths have been perpetuated in discussions of utility reform - and in many cases poor households have benefited from reform....

Subsidy policies on public urban transport have been adopted ubiquitously. In both developed and developing countries, subsidies are implemented to make transport more affordable. Despite their widespread implementation, there are virtually no quantitative assessments of their distributional...

To guarantee adequate and affordable water and sanitation services for vulnerable households, Chile introduced an individual means-tested water consumption subsidy a decade ago. Although the public authorities determine how the subsidy is applied, the mostly private companies deliver the service...