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Publications (24)
Working Paper
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In spite of not being ‘public goods’ in the strict sense of the term, public provision has been a common way of supplying utilities services around the world. Among the major reasons underlying the dominant position of the public sector as the provider of infrastructure are the recognition of the...
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– Subsidies and Service Obligations
Any infrastructure reformers concerned with social issues in a developing country need to address two problems. The first is increasing access by the poor, and the second is ensuring consumption affordability, i.e. the ability of the poor to pay for both consumption and the amortization of the...
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The privatization of the national public utilities that took place almost a decade ago in Argentina seem to be explained by the persisting deficits of the enterprises, a general dissatisfaction with their performance and the difficulties government faced in their control. During the period of...
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– Access to Basic Services in Bolivia
This paper analyses the privatization of utilities in Bolivia, detailing the particularities of the capitalization mechanism which was used for this purpose. The analysis suggests that capitalization and regulation, and the liberalization of the utilities sector more generally, succeeded in...
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Relying on a general equilibrium model of Argentina’s economy calibrated for 1993 and internalizing all productivity and scale gains achieved up to 1999, this paper isolates the distributional effects of utilities reform from the impact of other reforms taking place in the country during the 1990s...
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Privatization has been one of the primary factors generating changes in the Chilean economy over the last decade. Privatization has faced some opposition due part to its uncertain effect on employment and prices. Despite the importance of the topic, only few attempts have been made to analyse...
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Almost five years after privatization took place in electricity and telecommunications, and major reforms had been carried out in the administration of water, the results is not clear a priori. In order to elucidate the panorama, this research tries to assess the consumption and welfare impacts of...
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– A Global Perspective
This paper presents a global perspective on infrastructure coverage and the poor that many people will think they have seen before but in fact have not. It is widely assumed that the poor in developing countries have fewer infrastructure services than middle and upper- income households, but there...
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This paper analyses the reforms that have taken place in the utilities sectors in Spain, with a focus on the political role in shaping the process of these reforms. We argue that the deregulation process was marked by the historical close collaboration between the government and the industry, which...
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– Distributional Implications and Government Response
The UK was one of the earliest countries to undertake utility reform, which included changes in ownership, in the regulatory regime and in market structure and competition. While most agree that the programme has had beneficial effects on efficiency, there has been increasing concern about the...
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The objective of this paper is to broaden the discussion on regulation in general and on the regulation of utilities in particular. Beyond the technical complexity involved in designing and implementing regulatory interventions, we focus our attention on the conditions for achieving a fair process...
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This paper defines a role for human rights and human rights workers in the discussion of humanitarian emergencies. The approach is to look at how human rights law, monitoring, and information can be useful in two ways: (1) to warn of an impending humanitarian emergency, and (2) as part of efforts to...
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– An Econometric Investigation into the Sources of Humanitarian Emergencies
This paper uses econometric methods and case-study evidence to examine the political economy of complex humanitarian emergencies, multidimensional crises characterized by warfare, state violence, disease, hunger, and displacement. We emphasize that economic variables often become salient through...
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This paper explains correlations between humanitarian emergencies and political economies of 'failing states' in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In both, Cold War era rulers acquired personal power through their influence over economic exchange, irrespective of conventional public/private distinctions...
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– The Political Economy of Emergency in Haiti
Towards the Abyss? The Political Economy of Emergency in Haiti analyzes the various factors that have contributed to create a protracted humanitarian emergency situation in Haiti. The first section deals with the economic causes, the interplay between population growth, erosion and falling rural...
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– The Political Economy of Humanitarian Emergencies
This paper uses econometric methods and case-study evidence to examine the political economy of complex humanitarian emergencies, multidimensional crises characterized by warfare, disease, hunger, and displacement. We find that stagnation and decline in real GDP, high income inequality, inflation...
Displaying 16 of 24 results