Sites for sore eyes

The International Forum for Utility Regulation has an online resource portal designed to facilitate the exchange of information on utility regulation. It also has a directory listing addresses and descriptions of nearly 800 regulatory institutions in over 180 countries.

The World Bank’s Rapid Response Unit specialises in policy advice on investment climate and privatization for developing countries and provides over 800 full-text documents and links on various aspects of private sector development including economic regulation. It also has downloadable indicators for benchmarking the performance of business regulations and toolkits for the privatization and regulation of infrastructure services in sectors such as transport, telecommunications, water and sanitation.

The International Telecommunication Union is an international organisation within the UN system. Its website has a database of regulatory profiles of member states as well as information on the latest events, regulatory trends, case studies, reports and publications on different aspects of telecommunication regulation.

The Consumer Unity & Trust Society has research centres in India as well as in Zambia, Kenya and UK. It brings out newsletters that intend to highlight policy decisions in the field of regulation and competition in different countries. Its ‘7 Up’ project aims at doing a comparative study of competition regimes in seven developing countries.

The World Dialogue on Regulation for Network Economies generates and disseminates new knowledge in regulation and governance of network economies. It operates in both developing and developed countries through its involvement in research, dialogues, discussions, and widespread distribution of papers, reports, and other relevant information.

The AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies aims to hold law-makers and regulators accountable for their decisions by providing thoughtful, objective analyses of existing regulatory programs and new regulatory proposals. It also has developed a database to assess the quality of economic analysis and regulatory impacts.

The Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation focuses on the organisational and institutional settings for risk management and regulatory practices. The centre also hosts a searchable directory to locate up-to-date information on researchers working in the risk and regulation fields.

Centre for the Study of Regulated Industries investigates how regulation and competition are working in practice, both in the UK and abroad, with a focus on comparative analyses across the regulated industries.

The Centre on Regulation and Competition at the UK’s University of Manchester, is one of the few research centres in developed countries devoted to the study of regulation and competition in developing economies, and is the institutional base for many of the contributors to this issue of Insights. Research is undertaken by sponsoring research activities at the partner institutions based in developing countries.

Iram Khan
Centre on Regulation and Competition
IDPM
University of Manchester
M13 9GH
UK

ikhan@speedpost.net

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