Publication: Assessing the Governance of Electricity Regulatory Agencies in the Latin American and the Caribbean Region : A Benchmarking Analysis
Date
2007-11
ISSN
Published
2007-11
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper focuses on an evaluation and
benchmarking of the governance of regulatory agencies in the
electricity sector in Latin American Countries (LAC). Using
a unique database, we develop an index of regulatory
governance and rank all the agencies in the LAC countries.
The index is an aggregate number of the evaluation of four
key governance characteristics: autonomy, transparency,
accountability, and regulatory tools, including not only
formal aspects of regulation but also indicators related to
actual implementation. Based on 18 different indexes, we
analyze the positions of agencies with regard to different
aspects of their regulatory governance, considering not only
performance in each variable but also scores in the
different components of each category. This evaluation
allows for the identification of particular country
shortcomings regarding governance, and indicates needed
improvements. Although the region shows an overall good
governance design of their regulatory agencies, the
implementation of the independent regulator model still
faces several challenges. This is particularly evident in
political autonomy and in the informal aspects of
governance, where the region shows the largest number of
countries with the lowest scores. Trinidad and Tobago and
Brazil show the best results and Ecuador, Honduras, and
Chile the poorest performances. The rest of the countries
vary according to the different indexes. We give each
governance variable equal weights and positively test the
robustness of our approach using Principal Component Analysis.
Citation
“Andres, Luis; Guasch, José Luis; Diop, Makhtar; Azumendi, Sebastián Lopez. 2007. Assessing the Governance of Electricity Regulatory Agencies in the Latin American and the Caribbean Region : A Benchmarking Analysis. Policy Research Working Paper; No. 4380. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/2c86000e-d918-560e-b4d9-f560dc94bde5 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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