Governance choices and policy outcomes in the Latin American and caribbean electricity sector

The paper first provides, for Latin America and the Caribbean, country-specific synthetic quantitative measures of the degree of adoption of governance reforms in the electricity sector, focusing on four key dimensions (market structure, private sector participation (PSP), regulatory autonomy and operational organization). These measures are then correlated with standard policy performance outcomes measures. The findings suggest that, the reforms, considered jointly, were statistically significantly associated with higher technical and process quality but not with social or service improvements. Considered individually, increased regulatory autonomy enjoyed the highest positive correlation with desirable outcomes, but PSP has no significant correlation with any of the outcomes. In sum, as of 2018, governance reforms, considered jointly, had still not delivered on some promised payoffs, notably in addressing energy poverty, although the sensitivity analysis suggests that, for some indicators, the relationships are stronger for larger than for smaller countries.