Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9814335738 ISBN 13: 9789814335737

Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company, 2011

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.

From the Inside Flap:

Regulation of public infrastructure has been a topic of interest for more than a century. Yet, little is known about what works and why, when it comes to infrastructure regulation. This book intends to contribute to the understanding of infrastructure regulations by analyzing empirical cases in telecommunications, electricity and water, with examples drawn from a number of countries in Asia and beyond.

The book addresses the following questions: Does regulation work? What kind of regulation works? What kinds don't work? Why do some forms of regulation work and not others? How do we know whether they work or not? How do we isolate the effects of different political, economic and legal contexts? Are there systematic differences across infrastructure sectors that necessitate particular regulatory design? It brings together distinguished scholars and practitioners who are experts in the area to address essential issues in regulation through conceptual and empirical studies.