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Regulation is one of the tools used by governments to control monopolistic behaviour in the provision of public services such as electricity, transport or water. Technological and financial innovations have changed these public services markets since the 1990s, bringing new regulatory challenges, including technological and financial ones. This book demonstrates that basic regulatory theory and tools can address these new challenges, in addition to more traditional regulatory issues, both in developed and developing economies. The theory covered in the book is robust enough to guide regulators in multiple contexts, including those resulting from the effects of financial or political constraints, evolving market structures or the need to adapt to institutional weaknesses, climate change and poverty concerns that demand regulatory intervention. A bridge between theory and an evolving global practice, this book mobilizes the lessons of the past to analyse the future of economic regulation.
This paper provides an overview of the major current debates on infrastructure policy. It reviews the evidence on the macroeconomic significance of the sector in terms of growth and poverty alleviation. It also discusses the major institutional debates, including the relative comparative advantage of the public and the private sector in the various stages of infrastructure service delivery as well as the main options for changes in the role of government (i.e. regulation and decentralization).
Infrastructure and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa analyzes the extent to which, how, and how fast the infrastructure needs of the poor have been met in Sub-Saharan Africa. Estache and Wodon explore the extent to which some key policies have hurt or helped progress in trying to speed the expansions of coverage so clearly needed in the region. They focus on electricity, water, sanitation, and other services at the core of the day-to-day needs of the population, examining the extent to which reforms of the last 15-20 years have managed to reduce the infrastructure gap. They anchor their analysis on the evidence available about the macroeconomic importance of infrastructure for the region, the policies that have been adopted to accelerate coverage, and a detailed assessment of the poverty dimensions of infrastructure.
Stuck in the Middle examines both economic and social public policy initiatives in its assertion that enhancing the welfare of people in developed and developing nations requires an explicit focus on the middle class. Contents Foreword 1. Overview: Fiscal Policy, Distribution, and the Middle Class 2. Stylized Facts on the Middle Class and the Development Process 3. The Future of Global Income Inequality 4. The Scope and Limits of Subsidies 5. Policies for Lower Global Wealth Inequality 6. Can Happiness Research Help Fiscal Policy? 7. The Politics of Effective and Sustainable Redistribution
Sustainable infrastructure development is vital for Africa s prosperity. And now is the time to begin the transformation. This volume is the culmination of an unprecedented effort to document, analyze, and interpret the full extent of the challenge in developing Sub-Saharan Africa s infrastructure sectors. As a result, it represents the most comprehensive reference currently available on infrastructure in the region. The book covers the five main economic infrastructure sectors information and communication technology, irrigation, power, transport, and water and sanitation. 'Africa s Infrastructure: A Time for Transformation' reflects the collaboration of a wide array of African regional ins...
This semiannual journal from the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) provides a forum for influential economists and policymakers to share high-quality research directly applied to policy issues within and among those countries. Contents include: The Economics of Latin American Art: Creativity Patterns and Rates of Return Sebastian Edwards (UCLA) Privatization in Latin America: What Does the Evidence Say? Alberto Chong (IADB) and Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes (Yale University) Multinationals and Linkages: An Empirical Investigation Laura Alfaro (Harvard Business School) and Andres Rodriguez-Clare (IADB) On the Consequences of Sudden Stops Pablo E. Guidotti (Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Argentina), Federico Sturzenegger (Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Argentina), and Agustin Villar (Bank for International Settlements) Effects of Foreign Exchange Intervention under Public Information: The Chilean Case Matias Tapia (Canco Central de Chile) and Andrea Tokman (Banco Central de Chile)
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New research suggests that cross-country differences in legal origin help explain differences in financial development. This paper empirically assesses two theories of why legal origin influences financial development. First, the political' channel stresses that (i) legal traditions differ in the priority they give to the rights of individual investors vis- ...-vis the state and (ii) this has repercussions for the development of property rights and financial markets. Second, the adaptability' channel holds that (i) legal traditions differ in their ability to adjust to changing commercial circumstances and (ii) legal systems that adapt quickly to minimize the gap between the contracting needs of the economy and the legal system's capabilities will foster financial development more effectively than would more rigid legal traditions. We use historical comparisons and cross-country regressions to assess the validity of these two channels. We find that legal origin matters for financial development because legal traditions differ in their ability to adapt efficiently to evolving economic conditions.
The authors provide a summary of the main lessons learned from the past twenty-five years regarding public-private partnerships.
Countries emerging from civil war attract both aid and policy advice. This paper provides the first systematic empirical analysis of aid and policy reform in the post-conflict growth process. It is based on a comprehensive data set of large civil wars and covers 27 countries that were in their first decade of post-conflict economic recovery during the 1990s. The authors first investigate whether the absorptive capacity for aid is systematically different in post-conflict countries. They find that during the first three post-conflict years, absorptive capacity is no greater than normal, but that in the rest of the first decade it is approximately double its normal level. So ideally, aid shoul...