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This chapter assesses public-private partnerships (PPPs) in an economic context for both developed and developing countries. In terms of the developed nations, the lessons learned are illustrated from the experiences in the United Kingdom, as this is where the authors have more familiarity and also because the United Kingdom has led in terms of the value and scope of PPPs in Europe.

Better state regulation is a key component of economic reform. This is the first book to comprehensively explore international experience in the use of Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA), which involves assessing the potential benefits and costs of any regulatory change. The contributors reveal that RIA is being adopted by an increasing number of countries as a route to better regulation with varying degrees of success. The book includes contributions from leading experts on regulatory reform and introduces a range of case studies from developed, developing and transitional economies.

Better state regulation is a key component of economic reform. This is the first book to comprehensively explore international experience in the use of Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA), which involves assessing the potential benefits and costs of any regulatory change. The contributors reveal that RIA is being adopted by an increasing number of countries as a route to better regulation with varying degrees of success. The book includes contributions from leading experts on regulatory reform and introduces a range of case studies from developed, developing and transitional economies.

Better state regulation is a key component of economic reform. This is the first book to comprehensively explore international experience in the use of Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA), which involves assessing the potential benefits and costs of any regulatory change. The contributors reveal that RIA is being adopted by an increasing number of countries as a route to better regulation with varying degrees of success. The book includes contributions from leading experts on regulatory reform and introduces a range of case studies from developed, developing and transitional economies.

Regulating Utilities and Promoting Competition continues the series of annual books, published in association with the Institute of Economic Affairs and the London Business School, which critically review the state of utility regulation and competition policy.

Regulating Development examines the impact that regulation – good or bad – can have on the development of poorer societies. It opens with a succinct review of critical issues, including the implications of the spread of intellectual property rights legislation and the role of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Recent years have seen a movement away from state ownership towards more reliance on private markets to supply goods and services, including goods and services traditionally supplied by the state, such as telecommunications, water and electricity. These markets can be competitive, highly oligopolistic or even monopolistic. Where privatisation is associated with the creation of private monopoly then some form of continued state regulation is required to protect consumers from monopoly abuse. In cases where markets are oligopolistic or even competitive, state regulation may still be necessary to prevent the abuse of a dominant position, the creation of cartels, and in other ways to protect consumers through developing an effective ‘competition policy’. Moreover, state regulation is also adopted internationally to protect society in the form of the regulation of working conditions, product quality, the environment, health and safety and the like. Indeed, in North America and the EU the regulation of markets has expanded at the same time as industries have been privatised (Blundell and Robinson, 2000). Therefore, contrary to the ambitions of leading advocates of ‘privatisation’, such as Milton Friedman in economics and Margaret Thatcher in politics, the ‘frontiers of the state’ have not been so much ‘rolled back’, but have been reshaped and redirected since the 1970s. This is evidenced, for example, in the shares of gross domestic product (GDP) controlled by the state in OECD countries, which have remained fairly stable. The picture is much the same in many developing economies. Although 80 per cent of low-income countries are reported to have had some form of private participation in at least one infrastructure sector (Izaguirre and Rao, 2000), the scale of privatisation in many low-income economies has been very limited, especially outside of Latin America. In many countries privatisation seems to have been more talked about than carried out (e.g. Cook and Minogue, 1990; Parker, 2003). Only in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and to a lesser degree China was there evidence of a substantial change in the