The Private Provision of Public Services in Developing Countries

by Gabriel Roth

This work examines several different aspects of the major "public" services supplied by the private sector in developing countries: education, electricity, health, telecommunications, urban transportation, and water and sewerage. The author examines the problems, as well as the potential, of
private sector involvement, and discusses interrelationships between the sectors, obstacles to private sector involvement, and the problem of price equality. The book also includes commentary on the role of the government in relation to each type of service provision.

304 pages, Paperback

First published February 9, 1989

About the author

Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, has pioneered scholarly work on market-based roads, parking, and transit. Following a Rees Jeffreys Fellowship at the UK Road Research Laboratory, and studies at the Department of Applied Economics (University of Cambridge), on the economics of car parking, he worked for 20 years in five continents as a transportation economist for the World Bank. He has also authored studies for the governments of New Zealand and Sri Lanka, U.S. Agency for International Development, Inter-American Development Bank, Adam Smith Institute, International Center for Economic Growth, and other organizations, and served for three years as President of The Services Group, a consulting firm specializing in market-oriented approaches to economic development.

An author and contributor to scholarly volumes, his books include Paying for Roads: The Economics of Traffic Congestion (Penguin Books,1967); The Private Provision of Public Services in Developing Countries (World Bank, 1987); Roads in a Market Economy (Ashgate 1996); and Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads (The Independent Institute, 2006).