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,...

Estache and Goicoechea present an infrastructure database that was assembled from multiple sources. Its main purposes are: (i) to provide a snapshot of the sector as of the end of 2004; and (ii) to facilitate quantitative analytical research on infrastructure sectors. The working paper includes...

This note provides a snapshot as of 2004 of the share of countries with an "independent" regulatory agency and with at least some private sector financing of its sectoral investment needs for electricity, water and sanitation and telecoms. Among other things, it shows that: - For respectively,...

Estache, Perelman, and Trujillo review about 80 studies on electricity and gas, water and sanitation, and rail and ports (with a footnote on telecommunications) in developing countries. The main policy lesson is that there is a difference in the relevance of ownership for efficiency between...

In infrastructure, the possibility of a positive relationship between operators' profitability and the degree of concentration is a major political issue in view of the wide diversity of feelings about the potential role of the private sector. This is particularly important because of (1) the...

Thirty years ago, in 1974, Chile launched the first large-scale privatization in a developing country. About 15 years later, Argentina provided a new model of global infrastructure management. Since then a variety of public-private partnerships in infrastructure have been adopted throughout the...

Briceno, Estache, and Shafik review the evidence on the state of infrastructure in the developing world, emphasizing the investment needs and the emerging policy issues. While their assessment is seriously constrained by data gaps, they provide useful insights on the main challenges ahead,...

This paper presents a basic assessment of the financial performance of infrastructure service operators in developing countries. It relies on a new database of 120 companies put together to track the evolution of the cost of capital, the cost of equity and the return of equity for electricity,...