Privatization, Competition, Regulation, Developing economies, Electricity sector, L33, L43, L44, L50, 012, O38, O50,

Bradford Scholars -how to deposit your paper Overview Copyright check• Check if your publisher allows submission to a repository.• Use the Sherpa RoMEO database if you are not sure about your publisher's position or email openaccess@bradford.ac.uk.

Bradford Scholars -how to deposit your paper Overview Copyright check• Check if your publisher allows submission to a repository.• Use the Sherpa RoMEO database if you are not sure about your publisher's position or email openaccess@bradford.ac.uk.

Empirical investigation of the link between financial development and economic growth has established that finance exerts a significant and positive influence on growth. This paper extends this line of analysis by examining the contribution that financial development makes to poverty reduction in low-income countries. The results reported support the contention that financial sector development policy can contribute to achieving the goal of poverty reduction in developing countries.

Under pressure from donor agencies and international financial institutions such as the World Bank, some developing countries have experimented with the privatization of water services. This article reviews the econometric evidence on the effects of water privatization in developing economies and presents new results using statistical data envelopment analysis and stochastic cost frontier techniques and data from Africa. The analysis fails to show evidence of better performance by private utilities than by stateowned utilities. Among the reasons why water privatization could prove problematic in lower-income economies are the technology of water provision and the nature of the product, transaction costs, and regulatory weaknesses.

Privatisation is widely promoted as a means of improving economic performance in developing countries. However, the policy remains controversial and the relative roles of ownership and other structural changes, such as competition and regulation, in promoting economic performance remain uncertain. This article reviews the main empirical evidence on the impact of privatisation on economic performance in developing economies. The evidence suggests that if privatisation is to improve performance over the longer term, it needs to be complemented by policies that promote competition and effective state regulation, and that privatisation works best in developing countries when it is integrated into a broader process of structural reform.

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Recent years have seen countries introducing reform of their utility industries with a view to promoting private ownership and competition. This paper studies the effect of the sequencing of privatisation, competition and regulation reforms in electricity generation using data from 25 developing countries for the period 1985 to 2001. A fixed effects panel data model is used. The study finds that establishing an independent regulatory authority and introducing competition before privatisation is correlated with higher electricity generation, higher generation capacity and, in the case of the sequence of competition before privatisation, improved capital utilisation.