Concessions of Infrastructure in Latin America: Government-led Renegotiation

Abstract

This paper completes Guasch, Laffont and Straub (2003), extending the analysis to the case of government-led renegotiations. We first extend the theoretical framework to a multiple-period context in which both Pareto improving and rent shifting renegotiations at the initiative of the government can occur. We then perform an empirical analysis based on the same sample of 307 water and transport projects in 5 Latin American countries between 1989 and 2000. While some of the main insights, for example concerning the importance of having a regulator in place when awarding concessions and the fragility of price cap regulatory schemes, are unchanged, there are also significant differences, in particular with respect to the effect of investment and financing, as well as the corruption variables. We also provide additional evidence showing that a good regulatory framework is especially important in contexts with weak governance and political opportunism.