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Publications (36)
Within-country income inequality has risen since the early 1980s in most of the OECD, all transitional, and many developing countries. More recently, inequality has risen also in India and nations affected by the Asian crisis. Altogether, over the last twenty years, inequality worsened in 70 per...
Within-country income inequality has risen since the early 1980s in most of the OECD, all transitional, and many developing countries. More recently, inequality has risen also in India and nations affected by the Asian crisis. Altogether, over the last twenty years, inequality worsened in 70 per...
– A Fair Deal for Consumers?
Latin American countries have now privatized a large number of their utility industries and make more use of market approaches to delivery through networks. Privatization has major consequences for efficiency, long-term growth, consumer welfare and income distribution but insufficient attention has...
Working Paper
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This paper analyses the trends in within-country inequality during the post-World War II period, with particular attention to the last 20 years, on the basis of a review of the relevant literature and of an econometric analysis of inequality trends in 73 countries accounting for 80 per cent of the...
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...
Policy Brief
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This policy brief reports the main findings of the study on changes in within-country income inequality over the last two decades and on the links between poverty, inequality, and growth. It focuses on inequality at the national level, i.e. the distribution of income among people within a country...
Working Paper
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Inequality has risen in many countries over the last two decades, especially in the transition economies, but also in many developing and developed economies. This is disturbing since little progress can be made in poverty reduction when inequality is high and rising. Moreover, contrary to earlier...
Working Paper
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– Evidence and Interpretation
Until recently, the literature on income inequality within countries suggested that trends in this area had remained stable over the last few decades, and that there is no relation between changes in inequality on the one side and domestic and external liberalization on the other. Against this...
Working Paper
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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...
Working Paper
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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...
Working Paper
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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...
Working Paper
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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...
Working Paper
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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...
Working Paper
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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...
Working Paper
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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...
Working Paper
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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...
Displaying 16 of 36 results