An assessment of telecommunications reform in developing countries

The authors analyze the effect of policy reform in basic telecommunications on sectoral performance using a new panel data set for 86 developing countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean over the period 1985 to 1999. The authors address three questions: 1) What impact do specific policy changes-relating to ownership and competition-have on sectoral performance? 2) How is the impact of change in any one policy affected by the implementation of the other, and by the overall regulatory framework? 3) Does the sequence in which reforms are implemented affect performance? The authors find that both privatization and competition lead to significant improvements in performance. But a comprehensive reform program, involving both policies and the support of an independent regulator, produced the largest gains-an 8 percent higher level of mainlines and a 21 percent higher level of productivity compared to years of partial and no reform. Interestingly, the sequence of reform matters: mainline penetration is lower if competition is introduced after privatization, rather than at the same time. The authors also find that autonomous factors, such as technological progress, have a strong influence on telecommunications performance, accounting for an increase of 5 percent a year in teledensity and 9 percent in productivity over the period 1985 to 1999.Trade Finance and Investment,Environmental Economics&Policies,ICT Policy and Strategies,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Economics&Finance,Education for the Knowledge Economy

Infrastructure regulation and poverty reduction in developing countries: a review of the evidence and a research agenda

Poverty reduction is a primary goal of development policy. In large parts of the World people have to live on meagre incomes and have limited access to infrastructure services, such as mains water, safe sanitation, mains power supplies, maintained roads and telephones. In response, more and more infrastructure provision has been opened up to private investment over the last two decades and regulatory institutions have been introduced to protect the public interest in the absence of state ownership. In this paper the role of infrastructure regulation in poverty reduction is investigated drawing on the published evidence. The conclusion is that the evidence is both patchy and sometimes contradictory. There is mixed knowledge regarding the extent to which regulators address poverty issues and about the results of regulatory decisions. The paper concludes by proposing a future research agenda aimed at improving our understanding of the ways in which infrastructure regulation impacts on poverty, with the objective of improving actual regulatory policy in developing economies

Telecommunications performance, reforms, and governance

The authors assess the effects of private capital and independent regulatory agencies on telecommunications performance by using cross-country panel data from 1990 to 2003. In general, they find that having independent regulatory agencies positively affects affordability and labor productivity, but negatively affects quality. Having private capital positively affects access, quality, and labor productivity, but negatively affects affordability. However, reform policies affect industrial and developing countries differently in some cases. The authors also find that governance plays an important role as it affects performance and interacts with reform policies.Country Strategy&Performance,Economic Theory&Research,Infrastructure Regulation,ICT Policy and Strategies,Investment and Investment Climate

Why is it so difficult to implement a GST in Pakistan?

This paper is based on a presentation at the Sixth Annual Conference of the Lahore School of Economics, April 2010, and an International Growth Centre workshop at LUMS in June 2010

New public management and employee share ownership plan in Fiji’s public sector

This article provides insights into the implementation of new public management (NPM) practices in Fiji Telecom and whether the use of the employee share ownership scheme was helpful in the organisational change process. The NPM practices were influenced by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund who were the lenders to Fiji government. The adoption of NPM practices was part of a political, economic and public sector reforms introduced after 1989. The paper discusses the background and obstacles of the reform and how the employee share ownership scheme practice at a privatised Telecom Company assists employees to assimilate commercial business norms. The authors finally make recommendations for policy-makers in Fiji and other developing nations

International Coercion, Emulation and Policy Diffusion: Market-Oriented Infrastructure Reforms, 1977-1999

Why do some countries adopt market-oriented reforms such as deregulation, privatization and liberalization of competition in their infrastructure industries while others do not? Why did the pace of adoption accelerate in the 1990s? Building on neo-institutional theory in sociology, we argue that the domestic adoption of market-oriented reforms is strongly influenced by international pressures of coercion and emulation. We find robust support for these arguments with an event-history analysis of the determinants of reform in the telecommunications and electricity sectors of as many as 205 countries and territories between 1977 and 1999. Our results also suggest that the coercive effect of multilateral lending from the IMF, the World Bank or Regional Development Banks is increasing over time, a finding that is consistent with anecdotal evidence that multilateral organizations have broadened the scope of the “conditionality” terms specifying market-oriented reforms imposed on borrowing countries. We discuss the possibility that, by pressuring countries into policy reform, cross-national coercion and emulation may not produce ideal outcomes.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40099/3/wp713.pd

Glass half empty? politics and institutions in the liberalization of the fixed line telecommunications industry in Turkey

This chapter reviews Turkish experience with reform of the fixed line telecommunications industry. It provides an account of earlier incoherent attempts to privatize the incumbent operator in the absence of any regulatory framework or political consensus. It also describes the regulatory framework emerged in early 2000s and discusses the various political-economic and institutional factors behind its weak implementation, and hence its limited success in promoting competition

Regulating telecommunications in developing countries : outcomes, incentives, and commitment

In response to the recent wave ofprivatizing and regulating monopolies in developing countries, the authors evaluate the impact of different regulatory schemes on private sector behavior in the telecommunications sector in seven countries. They find that regulation is most effective - meaning, it results in substantial investment by the private sector, reasonable returns on this investment, and greater productivity - where the government/regulators reduce the firm's information advantage, induce the firm (through pricing) to operate efficiently, and institute safeguarding mechanisms to protect the firm against expropriation of assets or quasi-rents. Conversely, where the government/regulators fail to resolve information, incentive, and commitment problems, private sector returns are relatively high, and investment and productivity are relatively low.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Decentralization,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Knowledge Economy,Education for the Knowledge Economy

Utilities reforms and corruption in developing countries

This paper shows empirically that"privatization"in the energy, telecommunications, and water sectors, and the introduction of independent regulators in those sectors, have not always had the expected effects on access, affordability, or quality of services. It also shows that corruption leads to adjustments in the quantity, quality, and price of services consistent with the profit-maximizing behavior that one would expect from monopolies in the sector. The results suggest that privatization and the introduction of independent regulators have, at best, only partial effects on the consequences of corruption for access, affordability, and quality of utility services.Infrastructure Regulation,Energy Production and Transportation,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Social Accountability,ICT Policy and Strategies

Half glass empty? politics & institutions in the liberalization of the fixed line telecommunications industry in Turkey

This chapter reviews Turkish experience with reform of the fixed line telecommunications industry. It provides an account of earlier incoherent attempts to privatize the incumbent operator in the absence of any regulatory framework or political consensus. It also describes the regulatory framework emerged in early 2000s and discusses the various political-economic and institutional factors behind its weak implementation, and hence its limited success in promoting competition