Measuring the welfare effects of reform: Urban water supply in Guinea

Reforming public utilities remains high on the agenda of economists and policy-makers. Few studies however have measured the impact of these reforms on welfare. This paper analyzes the radical changes in the arrangement providing water to Conakry (Guinea) and estimates the consequences of that reform on consumers, the government, and the foreign owners involved in the process. It shows that notwithstanding a difficult institutional environment, private sector participation benefited all constituents. It does so using a comparative method, with the actual results compared to a counterfactual scenario. The robustness of our results is supported by sensitivity tests.