Infrastructure industries including telecommunications, electricity, water, and gas underwent massive structural changes during the 1990s. During that decade, hundreds of privatization transactions valued at billions of dollars were completed in these sectors in developing and transitional economies. While privatization has received the most attention, reforms also included market liberalization, structural changes like unbundling, and the introduction of new laws and regulations. To date, regulations have received far less attention than their potential economic effects warrant, largely due to lack of data. In order to address this problem, we set out to compile an extensive, comprehensive, and consistent dataset through an extensive survey of telecommunications and electricity regulators in developing countries. Our database of telecommunications regulations includes 178 variables on regulatory governance and content in 45 countries. Our database of electricity regulations includes 374 variables in 20 countries.

Both datasets are freely downloadable. If you use the data, please cite this working paper:

Scott Wallsten, George Clarke, Luke Haggarty, Rosario Kaneshiro, Roger Noll, Mary Shirley, and Lixin Colin Xu. "New Tools for Studying Network Industry Reforms in Developing Countries: The Telecommunications and Electricity Regulation Database." AEI-Brookings Joint Center Related Publication 04-05. March 2004.

The telecommunications database is available here for Stata and Excel.

The electricity database is available here for Stata and Excel.