This paper performs a literature update of quantitative studies of water and sanitation services (WSS). There are 190 studies which use cost or production functions to evaluate the performance of WSS utilities. The studies examine (1) the scale, scope or density economies of utilities in a...

The public administration, and the higher education sector in particular, is nowadays facing profound transformations and challenges to which Portugal is no exception. The quality regulation models in the present context are crucial to increase the performance of the public organizations...

Cross-country comparisons avoid the unsteady equilibrium in which regulators have to balance between economies of scale and a sufficient number of remaining comparable utilities. By the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we compare the efficiency of the drinking water sector in the...

Environmental factors add complexity to the comparison between specific activities or entire entities. Decision making units with an inferior performance are tempted to invoke that their organization is different from the others in the data set. By reinterpreting and extending the metafrontier...

This paper analyses regulation by contract in public-private partnerships (PPPs) for infrastructure services. Although the benefits of competition for the market and subsequent regulatory contracts are recognised, the literature also identifies contract design failures. When considering these...

Small Island Developing states (SIDs) present challenges for analysts and policy-makers attempting to strengthen island-nation infrastructure. This study applies lessons to one SID to illustrate how benchmarking can improve the performance of water utilities. The archipelago-nation of Cape Verde...

A global reform of the Portuguese seaport sector favoured the involvement of the private sector in the provision of port services and the improving of its performance. The regulatory model, the institutional setting and the operations features of the Portuguese seaport sector are briefly...

The economic crisis in most developed countries is fostering the search for new models for infrastructure planning and management. There is great uncertainty surrounding these investments and, therefore, it is necessary to capture the latent value from infrastructure projects. The principle is...

In 1998, and in the context of the European Directives, a reform of the Portuguese rail sector was implemented, through the vertical separation of the two basic rail activities, and an access charging system with economic regulation was introduced. This study sought to understand the Portuguese...