Person:
Guasch, Jose Luis
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Competitiveness; Industrial Organization; Innovation; Infrastructure and PPP
Degrees
Departments
University of California, San Diego
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
February 1, 2023
Biography
Mr. Guasch holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University, California, USA and Industrial Engineering Degree from the Polytechnic University of Barcelona, Spain. He is the Former Senior Regional Advisor in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Region in The World Bank in Washington, DC, responsible for regulation, competitiveness, infrastructure/PPP , innovation and technology issues and investment climate for the LAC Region and was the Head of the World Bank Global Expert Team on PPP. He is also a Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego, since 1980. Over 30 years of experience advising Governments on multiple aspects i) on improving Competitiveness, and Innovation and Mainstreaming SMEs into the value chain; and ii) on Infrastructure and PPPs and Regulation (legal, institutional, processes, contract design, contract oversight, instruments and capacity building, financial issues, pricing etc). He has assisted and adviced Governments in more than 50 countries on a variety of isssues among them on competitiveness, and infrastructure and PPPs. He has written extensively in leading economic and finance journals, and has written several books. His most recent books are: (i) Managing the Regulatory Process: Design, Concepts, Issues and the Latin America and Caribbean Story; (ii) The Challenge of Designing and Implementing Effective Regulation: A Normative Approach and an Empirical Evaluation; (iii) Labor Markets: The Unfinished Reform in Latin America and Caribbean; (iv) Closing the Gap in Education and Technology in Latin America ; (v) Granting and Renegotiating Concessions: Doing it Right; vi) The Impact of Private Participation in Infrastructure; and vii) Does the Investment Climate Matter?
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 33
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Publication
Innovative and Absorptive Capacity of International Knowledge : An Empirical Analysis of Productivity Sources in Latin American Countries
(Taylor and Francis, 2011-12-08)This article examines two sources of global knowledge spillovers: foreign direct investments (FDI) and trade. Empirical evidence demonstrates that FDI and trade can contribute to overall domestic productivity growth only when the technology gap between domestic and foreign firms is not too large and when a sufficient absorptive capacity is available in domestic firms. In this article we propose the terms R&D and Labor quality to capture the innovative and absorptive capacity of the country. The spillovers effects in productivity are analyzed using a stochastic frontier (SFA) approach. This productivity (in terms of total factor productivity) is decomposed using a generalized Malmquist output-oriented index in order to evaluate the specific effect in technical change (TC), technical efficiency change (TEC), and scale efficiency change (SEC). Using country-level data for 16 Latin American countries for the period 1996–2006, the empirical analysis shows positive productivity spillovers from FDI and trade only when the country has absorptive capacity in terms of R&D. FDI and trade spillovers are found to be positive and significant for scale efficiency change and total productivity factor change. -
Publication
Uncovering the Drivers of Utility Performance : Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean on the Role of the Private Sector, Regulation, and Governance in the Power, Water, and Telecommunication Sectors
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-06-07)This book conducts a micro-level analysis of various determinants of infrastructure sector performance that affect development. This book focuses on the distribution segment of three basic infrastructure services: electricity, water and sanitation, and fixed telecommunications. This books aims to answer four main sets of questions: what are the main performance trends in the region, and how heterogeneous are they?; how does the performance of state-owned and private utilities differ?; how does the institutional design of regulatory agencies affect sector performance?; and what management mechanisms create incentives for improved performance?. This book begins by describing the main elements that characterize sector performance, defined as the delivery of reliable, affordable service that complies with certain quality standards. It focuses on the relationship between sector performance and the following determinants: private sector participation, regulatory agencies, and corporate governance. It also examines related aspects, such as contract design, market structure, and, for telecommunications, market competition. This book first explains the dynamics of utility performance and the interactions between key internal variables and utility performance in each sector. The book is organized as follows: chapter one is introduction. Chapter two outlines changes in the electricity distribution, water and sanitation, and fixed telecommunications sectors in the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region over the past 15 years. This chapter tells multiple stories of the substantial improvement in these sectors and fills in knowledge gaps by benchmarking utility performance at the regional, country, and utility levels. Chapter three synthesizes the impact private sector participation has had on electricity distribution, water and sewerage, and fixed-line telecommunications. This chapter also identifies whether private sector participation characteristics such as the sale method; investor nationality; and award criterion affect performance. Chapter four explores the institutional design of regulatory agencies and the link between regulatory governance and sector performance. Chapter five assesses the governance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in infrastructure, based on survey results from 45 SOEs in the water and electricity distribution sector of LAC. Chapters six examines other potential determinants for sector performance, including corruption, cost recovery, contract arrangements, and competition. Chapter seven summarizes the book s main results and describes the array of possibilities for moving forward. -
Publication
Public Private Partnerships in the Caribbean : Bridging the Financing Gap
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06)Caribbean countries are committed to achieving significant economic and social development to raise the living standards and welfare of citizens. To achieve rapid development, to support most needed sustainable high growth rates and poverty reduction, it is necessary to make substantial and immediate investments in economic and social infrastructure. Efficient, cost competitive facilities and services in transport and communications, energy, water, sanitation, health and education are essential to drive and support this development effort and to reduce poverty. Yet, fiscal space, the resources available to the public sector for needed infrastructure investments are very limited. Many Caribbean countries have high levels of public debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) and high fiscal deficits. Under traditional public procurement, government obtains a public infrastructure service such as electricity, water supply, schools and hospitals, by engaging a contractor to construct a facility which the Government then owns, manages and operates. This form of public procurement will continue, but as a result of the limited fiscal space, public infrastructure services development will also be sought through public private partnership (PPP) arrangements which will mean a broader role for the private sector in providing infrastructure facilities and services. The Governments of most Caribbean countries appear fully committed to promoting economic activities and enhancing the well-being of its citizens through more active participation of the private sector in improving the infrastructure of the nation. Those Governments believe that improving infrastructure through PPP arrangements will harness the development of the private sector to contribute to the growth of GDP and poverty reduction over the life of their respective strategic development plan and current administrations. -
Publication
Closing the Gap in Education and Technology
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003)This report focuses not only on the gaps facing Latin America in both education and technology, but especially on the interactions between the two. The central premise of the report is that skills and technology interact in important ways, and this relationship is a fundamental reason for the large observed differences in productivity and incomes across countries. This report argues that skills upgrading technological change, and their interaction are major factors behind total factor productivity growth. Skill-biased technological change is indeed being transferred today at faster speeds to LAC countries, as elsewhere. Technological change has been complementary with skill levels in Latin America in the last two decades. It is further estimated that firms have substantially increased the demand for educated workers in the region, particularly workers with tertiary education. This technological transformation appears to be intimately related to patterns of integration in the world economy. Firms in sectors with higher exposure to trade are subject to more competitive pressures. Adopting and adapting more advanced technologies and hiring and training more educated workers is one way to respond to this pressure to become more productive. The increased potential demand for education offers the possibility to accelerate productivity growth in the economy by closing the educational and technological gaps that Latin American countries exhibit with respect to their peers. -
Publication
Granting and Renegotiating Infrastructure Concessions : Doing it Right
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004-01)In most developing and industrial countries, infrastructure services have traditionally been provided by government enterprises, but in developing countries at least, these enterprises have often proven to be inefficient, unable to provide much-needed investments, and manipulated to achieve political objectives. By contrast, many studies have shown that over the past 30 years, private (or privatized) enterprises in developing countries have, on average, delivered superior performance and needed investments. Explanations differ on why this discrepancy exists. Private enterprises are driven by a desire for profits and may have more professional know-how in management, operating procedures, and use of appropriate technology. But perhaps the most important reason for their stronger performance is that privatization makes intervening in enterprise operations difficult for governments and politicians, so government manipulation is less likely. However, the issue, in general, has been how to ensure that the improved performance and efficiency gains are passed through to the users through lower tariffs and increased coverage, while allowing firms to earn a fair rate of return on their investments. -
Publication
Inventories in Developing Countries : Levels and Determinants--A Red Flag for Competitiveness and Growth
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001-02)Raw materials inventories in the manufacturing sector in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were two to five times as high in developing countries as in the United States, despite the fact that in most developing countries real interest rates are at least twice as high. Given the high cost of capital in most developing countries, these high inventory levels have an enormous impact on the cost of doing business and on productivity and competitiveness. Poor infrastructure and ineffective regulation as well as deficiencies in market development - rather than the interest rates and uncertainty - are the main determinants of these differences. Cross-country estimates show that a one-standard-deviation improvement in infrastructure reduces raw materials inventories by 27-47 percent. Poorly functioning markets, as measured by the ratio of transfers and subsidies to GDP, are also an important factor, with a one-standard-deviation improvement leading to a 19-30 percent reduction in raw materials inventories. The authors show that these reductions in raw materials inventories are not offset by a reduction in finished goods inventories upstream. The policy implications are clear and strong. Improvements in infrastructure (roads, ports, and telecommunications) can help to significantly reduce inventory levels (and thus the cost of doing business), especially when accompanied by effective regulation and the development and deregulation of associated markets. -
Publication
Price Caps, Efficiency Payoffs, and Infrastructure Contract Renegotiation in Latin America
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-08)Twenty years ago, as the United Kingdom was getting ready to launch the privatization of its public services, Professor Littlechild developed and operationalized the concept of price caps as a regulatory regime to control for residual monopoly conditions in those services. Ten years later, Latin American countries, as they embarked into their own infrastructure reforms, also adopted the price cap regulatory model. Relying on a large data base on the factors driving contract renegotiation in the region and a survey of the literature on efficiency gains, the authors assess the impact of this regulatory regime in Latin America. They show that while the expected efficiency gains were amply achieved, these gains were seldom passed on to the users. Instead they were shared by the government and the firms. Moreover, the adoption of price caps implied higher costs of capital and hence, tariffs, and brought down levels of investment. -
Publication
Renegotiation of Concession Contracts in Latin America
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-04)The authors construct a regulation model in which renegotiation occurs due to the imperfect enforcement of concession contracts. This enables the authors to provide theoretical predictions for the impact on the probability of renegotiation of a concession, regulatory institutions, institutional features, economic shocks, and the characteristics of the concession contracts. Then they use a data set of nearly 1,000 concessions awarded in Latin America and the Caribbean countries from 1989 to 2000 covering the sectors of telecommunications, energy, transport, and water to test these predictions. Finally, the authors derive some policy implications of their theoretical and empirical work. -
Publication
Just-in-Case Inventories : A Cross-Country Analysis
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-04)The authors find that raw materials inventories in the manufacturing sector in the 1970s and 1980s were two to three times higher in developing countries than in the United States, despite the fact that in most developing countries real interest rates were at least twice as high. Those significantly high levels of inventories are a burden and an obstacle to country competitiveness and need to be addressed. Poor infrastructure and ineffective regulation, as well as deficiencies in market development, rather than the traditional factors used in inventory models (such as interest rates and uncertainty), are the main determinants and explain these differences. Cross-country estimations show that a one standard deviation worsening of infrastructure increases raw materials inventories by 11 percent to 37 percent, and a one standard deviation worsening of markets increases raw materials inventories by 18 percent to 37 percent. These findings are robust across a number of different proxies and specifications, including an industry-level specification that controls for fixed country effects. -
Publication
Multidimensionality and Renegotiation : Evidence from Transport-Sector Public-Private-Partnership Transactions in Latin America
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-07)Multidimensional auctions are a natural and practical solution when auctioneers pursue more than one objective in their public-private-partnership transactions. However, it is difficult to achieve auction efficiency with multiple award criteria. Using auction data from road and railway concessions in Latin America, the probability of renegotiation this paper estimates by a two-stage least squares technique with a binary selection in the first-stage regression. The findings show that auctioneers tend to adopt the multidimensional format when the need for social considerations, such as alleviation of unemployment, is high. This implies that such political considerations could hinder efficiency and transparency in auctions. The analysis also shows that the renegotiation risk in infrastructure concessions increases when multidimensional auctions are used. Rather, good governance, particularly anti-corruption policies, can mitigate the renegotiation problem.