Luis Andres

The Impact of Private Sector Participation in Infrastructure : Lights, Shadows, and the Road Ahead

As numerous countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and elsewhere are moving toward a second phase of private participation in infrastructure programs mostly through public-private partnership schemes and other countries are just beginning the process, several concerns remain from the outcomes of the first phase. These concerns are making governments cautious in moving forward. The Impact of private sector participation in infrastructure addresses these concerns and brings clarity to the debate on the impact of private participation in infrastructure. The assessment of this impact may be one of the most emotional policy issues in economics, as it is clouded in a mist of myths, perceptions, and reality. This book analyzes the impact and sorts out the truth from the myths. The authors take a systematic and hard look at the facts (i.e., data) in Latin America, where starting in the late 1980s, many governments brought private sector participation into the delivery of essential utilities services. Although there are many assessments of this experience, none was able to rely on systemic, cross-country, and time-series data, and practically all of them did not save rare exceptions account for what would have happened in the absence of interventions (the counterfactual). This book does just that. It brings together an all encompassing database from the 1980s to the first decade of this century and develops an effective and robust methodology, accounting for the counterfactual, which tests and estimates the impact of reform on an exceptionally wide set of outcome indicators. As a result, this book presents the most in-depth study to date of the private sector participation experience in Latin America, and it substantially advances the existing literature by offering robust econometric analysis.

The Impact of Privatization on the Performance of the Infrastructure Sector: The Case of Electricity Distribution in Latin American Countries

The authors analyze the impact of privatization on the performance of 116 electric utilities in 10 Latin American countries. The analysis makes a number of contributions to the literature on changes in infrastructure ownership. First, this is the first systemic analysis of the impact of privatization on the distribution of the electricity sector. Second, it constructs an unbalanced panel data set of key indicators for each country. Third, it includes a broader-than in past studies-range of indicators, such as output, employment, productivity, efficiency, quality, coverage, and prices, offering a fuller picture of the effects of privatization on consumers. Fourth, this research covers a longer period of time, and evaluates three stages-before, transition, and after-allowing for the identification of the short- and long-run effects of privatization, as opposed to previous analysesshort time series data that do not identify long-run outcomes. Finally, the counterfactual is considered through the analysis in trends. The authors apply two different methodologies. The first methodology uses means and medians from each period and tests the significance of the changes between periods. The second methodology consists of an econometric model that captures firm fixed effects, firm-specific time trends, and heteroscedasticity corrections. When needed, the authorsused firm-specific time trends to better understand the outcomes. The results suggest that changes in ownership generate significant improvements in labor productivity, efficiency, and product and service quality, and that most of those changes occur in the transition period. Improvements in the post transition period-beyond two years after the change in ownership-are much more modest.

Assessing the governance of electricity regulatory agencies in the Latin American and the Caribbean region : a benchmarking analysis

This paper focuses on an evaluation and benchmarking of the governance of regulatory agencies in the electricity sector in Latin American Countries (LAC). Using a unique database, we develop an index of regulatory governance and rank all the agencies in the LAC countries. The index is an aggregate number of the evaluation of four key governance characteristics: autonomy, transparency, accountability, and regulatory tools, including not only formal aspects of regulation but also indicators related to actual implementation. Based on 18 different indexes, we analyze the positions of agencies with regard to different aspects of their regulatory governance, considering not only performance in each variable but also scores in the different components of each category. This evaluation allows for the identification of particular country shortcomings regarding governance, and indicates needed improvements. Although the region shows an overall good governance design of their regulatory agencies, the implementation of the independent regulator model still faces several challenges. This is particularly evident in political autonomy and in the informal aspects of governance, where the region shows the largest number of countries with the lowest scores. Trinidad and Tobago and Brazil show the best results and Ecuador, Honduras, and Chile the poorest performances. The rest of the countries vary according to the different indexes. We give each governance variable equal weights and positively test the robustness of our approach using Principal Component Analysis.

Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises

vi ABSTRACT Following a plethora of scandals in both the public and private sectors, corporate governance has become the subject of contentious debates in the public domain over the past decade As a result, codes of good practice in the form of Cadbury, Greenbury, Turnbul, Hempel, Higgs, Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and Bosch Commission were ushered in different parts of Europe, Australia and the United States of America (USA). In South Africa, the King Commission on Corporate Governance was developed and subsequently modified for State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Despite the progress noted, the SOEs environment remains in distress as boards and management struggle to maintain a balance between legislative compliance and performance. It is in the latter context that the study was inspired by the boards of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and the Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom) respectively struggle to actualise sound corporate governance practices in order to deliver shareholder value. As part of the qualitative research approach, primary data collection was conducted by means of comprehensive face-to-face interviews with board members and senior management at the two above-mentioned organisations. In total, 30 (thirty) board members and senior managers were interviewed. In addition, secondary data was collected in the form of records, strategy reports, business plans, and memos written to participants. In analysing qualitative interview data, the study utilised content analysis and cross-case analysis methods, on whose basis five themes were derived, namely: legislation and regulations; the interface between board and management; the role of the board in strategy development; performance monitoring of the board; as well as the organisational funding model. The findings of the study include: fragmented and convoluted legislation; blurring of lines between management and governance; a weak board performance monitoring culture; unclear prioritization of social policy agenda, and inadequate funding to support social policy programmes, such as infrastructure. The policy reviews create leadership instability and accentuate distrust between boards and senior managers. This study further emphasizes limitations of the theoretical frameworks underpinning corporate governance in SOEs, and also advances detailed understanding of the corporate governance issues facing SOEs.

Crisis in Latin America: infrastructure investment, employment and the expectations of stimulus

Infrastructure investment is a central part of the stimulus plans of the Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) region as it confronts the growing financial crisis. This article estimates the potential effects on direct, indirect and induced employment for different types of infrastructure projects with LAC-specific variables. The analysis finds that the direct and indirect short-term employment generation potential of infrastructure capital investment projects may be considerable—averaging around 40,000 annual jobs per US

Do Regulation and Institutional Design Matter for Infrastructure Sector Performance

1billion in LAC, depending upon such variables as the mix of sub-sectors in the investment programme; the technologies deployed; local wages for skilled and unskilled labour; and the degrees of leakages to imported inputs. While these numbers do not account for a substitution effect, they are built around an assumed ‘basket’ of investments that crosses infrastructure sectors most of which are not employment-maximising. Albeit limited in scope, rural road maintenance projects may employ 200,000 to 500,000 annualised direct jobs for every US

Infrastructure Gap in South Asia: Infrastructure Needs, Prioritization, and Financing

1billion spent. The article also describes the potential risks to effective infrastructure investment in an environment of crisis including sorting and planning contradictions, delayed implementation and impact, affordability and corruption.

Uncovering the Drivers of Utility Performance : Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean on the Role of the Private Sector, Regulation, and Governance in the Power, Water, and Telecommunication Sectors

This paper evaluates the impact of economic regulation on infrastructure sector outcomes. It tests the impact of regulation from three different angles: aligning costs with tariffs and firm profitability; reducing opportunistic renegotiation; and measuring the effects on productivity, quality of service, coverage, and prices. The analysis uses an extensive data set of about 1,000 infrastructure concessions granted in Latin America from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. The analysis finds that as the theory indicates, regulation matters. The empirical work here reported shows that in three relevant economic aspects-aligning costs and tariffs; dissuading renegotiations; and improving productivity, quality of service, coverage, and tariffs-the structure, institutions, and procedures of regulation matter. Thus, significant efforts should continue to be made to improve the structure, quality, and institutionality of regulation. Regulation matters for protecting both consumers and investors, for aligning closely financial returns and the costs of capital, and for capturing higher levels of benefits from the provision of infrastructure services by the private sector.

Meeting the balance of electricity supply and demand in Latin America and the Caribbean

If the South Asia region hopes to meet its development goals and not risk slowing down or even halting growth, poverty alleviation, and shared prosperity, it is essential to make closing its huge infrastructure gap a priority. Identifying and addressing gaps in the data on expenditure, access, and quality are crucial to ensuring that governments make efficient, practical, and effective infrastructure development choices. This study addresses this knowledge gap by focusing on the current status of infrastructure sectors and geographical disparities, real levels of investment and private sector participation, deficits and proper targets for the future, and bottlenecks to expansion. The findings show that the South Asia region needs to invest between US

Rethinking infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean : spending better to achieve more

1.7 trillion and US