Capitalization, Regulation and the Poor: Access to basic services in Bolivia

Gover Barja and Miguel Urquiola

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: This paper analyses the privatization of utilities in Bolivia, detailing the particularities of the capitalization mechanism that was used for this purpose. The analysis suggests that capitalization and regulation, and the liberalization of the utilities sector more generally, succeeded in attracting foreign investment, thus fulfilling one of the central goals of the reforms of this sector. Foreign investment made possible the increase in access to basic services in urban areas, although access in rural areas remains very low. In terms of connection, service expansion in the urban areas did not bypass the poor. On the contrary, in some cases, access improvements appear to have been particularly beneficial to low-income households. Some reform-related price increases did have adverse welfare effects. Nevertheless, the findings in this area are affected by data limitations, and in any case, do not seem to outweigh the benefits brought about by greater access.

Keywords: Privatization; Regulation; Utilities; Poverty; Bolivia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
Note: This study has been prepared within the UNU/WIDER project on “The Social Impact of Privatization and Regulation of Utilities in Latin America”, co-directed by Cecilia Ugaz, UNU/WIDER (Helsinki), and Professor Catherine Waddams, University of East Anglia (Norwich). UNU/WIDER gratefully acknowledges the financial contribution to the project by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/335579/1/C ... ion-and-the-Poor.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esprep:335579

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().