Infrastructure Regulation: What Works, Why And How Do We Know? Lessons From Asia And Beyond

Regulation of public infrastructure has been a topic of interest for more than a century. Providing public goods, securing their financing, maintenance, and improving the efficiency of their delivery, has generated a voluminous literature and series of debates. More recently, these issues have again become a central concern, as new public management approaches have transformed the role of the state in the provision of public goods and the modalities by which the financing of infrastructure and its operation are procured.Yet, despite the proliferation of new modalities of regulating infrastructure little is known about what works and why. Why do certain regulatory regimes fail and others succeed? What regulatory designs and institutional features produce optimal outcomes and how? And why do regulatory forms of governance when transplanted into different institutional contexts produce less than uniform outcomes?This book addresses these questions, exploring the theoretical foundations of regulation as well as a series of case studies drawn from the telecommunications, electricity, and water sectors. It brings together distinguished scholars and expert practitioners to explore the practical problems of regulation, regulatory design, infrastructure operation, and the implications for infrastructure provision.

Table of Contents:
Regulating Infrastructure: A Review of the Issues, Problems & Challenges; Infrastructure Regulation: What Works and How do we Know It?; Does Political Accountability Matter for Infrastructure Regulation? The Case of Telecommunications; Entry Relaxation and an Independent Regulator: Performance Impact on the Mobile Telecoms Industry in Asia; Risk, Regulation & Governance: Institutional Processes and Regulatory Risk in the Thai Energy Sector; Electricity Tariff Regulation in Thailand: Analyses and Applications of Incentive Regulation; Regulating Power without a Five Year Plan: Institutional Changes in the Chinese Power Sector; The Indonesian Electricity Sector: Institutional Transition, Regulatory Capacity and Outcomes; Regulating the Independent Power Producers: A Comparative Analysis of the Performance of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu in India; Partial Privatization and Nested Regulation: Institutional Choices in Public Sector and Regulatory Reform; The Electricity Industry Reform in Korea: Lessons for Further Liberalization; Regulatory Independence and Contract Incompleteness: Assessing Regulatory Effectiveness in Water Privatization in Manila; Can Regulation Improve the Performance of Government-controlled Water Utilities?; Effects of Regulatory Quality and Political Institutions on Access to Water and Sanitation; The Regulation of Water Infrastructure in Italy: Origins and Effects of an 'Hybrid' Regulatory System; Measuring Effectiveness of Regulation Across a River System: A Welfare Approach; Private Sector Participation and Regulatory Reform in Water Supply: The Southern Mediterranean Experience; Tempered Responsiveness through Regulatory Negotiations: Managing Unanticipated Innovations Emerging from Participation Reforms in Water Based Resources.