Processes,Information and Accounting Gaps: Learning from Argentina's Privatized Railways Regulation

Abstract

The paper uses the analysis of the main regulatory problems in Argentina's privatised railways to illustrate the importance of regulatory processes for the long run sustainability of privatisation strategies. Although many of the conflicts have been magnified by the recent crisis, we argue that they are in fact the result of a failure to create a set of rules of interaction among the government, regulators, users. We discuss in particular the main informational gaps, focusing on the failure to issue the regulatory accounting guidelines needed to implement the regulatory regime built in the contracts. Finally, we suggest solutions to close some of the information gaps.