Infrastructure is crucial for generating growth, alleviating
poverty, and increasing international competitiveness. For much of the
20th century and in most countries, the network utilities that
delivered infrastructure services—such as electricity, natural
gas, telecommunications, railroads, and water supply—were
vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. This approach
often resulted in extremely weak services, especially in developing and
transition economies, and particularly for poor people. Common problems
included low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient
revenue, and shortfalls in investment.
Recognizing infrastructure's importance, many countries over the
past two decades have implemented far-reaching infrastructure
reforms—restructuring, privatizing, and establishing new
approaches to regulation. Reforming Infrastructure identifies
the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection within the
historical, economic, and institutional context of developing and
transition economies. It also assesses the outcomes of these policy
changes, as well as their distributional consequences—especially
for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. And, drawing on a
range of international experiences and empirical studies, it recommends
directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure
performance—identifying pricing policies that strike a balance
between economic efficiency and social equity, suggesting rules
governing access to bottleneck infrastructure facilities, and proposing
ways to increase poor people's access to these crucial
services.
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