Person:
Pargal, Sheoli
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Infrastructure economics; infrastructure regulation; energy policy; public-private partnerships; India; Bangladesh
Degrees
ORCID
Departments
South Asia Sustainable Development
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Sheoli Pargal is an Economic Adviser in the World Bank’s department for Sustainable Development for South Asia. She has worked across infrastructure sectors on a range of topics including regulation and governance, private sector participation, public-private partnerships, and industrial pollution, with a focus on analytical and technical advisory work. In twenty years at the World Bank she has had assignments in the research department; Latin America, Eastern Europe and South Asia; and corporate policy and operations units. She has also worked in the Planning Commission in India. Ms. Pargal has a Ph.D in Economics from Northwestern University and B.A. and M.A. degrees in economics from St. Stephen’s College and the Delhi School of Economics at Delhi University.
Publication Search Results
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Publication
Regulation and Private Sector Investment in Infrastructure : Evidence from Latin America
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-04)The author assesses the importance of the regulatory framework as a determinant of private sector investment in infrastructure. She uses recently compiled data on private and public sector investment in the water, power, telecommunications, railroads, and roads sectors between 1980 and 1998 in nine countries in Latin America. The author finds that the most significant institutional determinant of private investment volumes is the passage of legislation liberalizing the investment regime. This is important because it indicates that the legal basis for reform is probably more critical in determining the quality of the investment climate than specific aspects of the institutional framework governing private sector participation. In accordance with intuition, the author's results indicate that government action to increase regulatory certainty and minimize the perceived risk of expropriation through the establishment of independent regulatory bodies is a critical determinant of the volume of private investment flows. She also finds that the general relationship of private to public investment is one of substitutability.