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This report assesses the potential of electricity contract auctions as a procurement option for the World Bank's client countries. It focuses on the role of auctions of electricity contracts designed to expand and retain existing generation capacity. It is not meant to be a 'how-to' manual. Rather, it highlights some major issues and options that need to be taken into account when a country considers moving towards competitive electricity procurement through the introduction of electricity auctions. Auctions have played an important role in the effort to match supply and demand. Ever since the 1990s, the use of long-term contract auctions to procure new generation capacity, notably from private sector suppliers, has garnered increased affection from investors, governments, and multilateral agencies in general, as a means to achieve a competitive and transparent procurement process while providing certainty of supply for the medium to long term. However, the liberalization of electricity markets and the move from single-buyer procurement models increased the nature of the challenge facing system planners in their efforts to ensure an adequate and secure supply of electricity in the future at the best price. While auctions as general propositions are a means to match supply with demand in a cost-effective manner, they can also be and have been used to meet a variety of goals.

We study an assembly system wherein one manufacturer purchases components from two suppliers with private production cost information. During the procurement process, the manufacturer can contract the suppliers either simultaneously or sequentially. The main question we address is how the contracting sequence influences the manufacturer’s optimal procurement contract design. We find that the manufacturer’s optimal procurement contract varies with the contracting sequence and the suppliers’ cost structure. Particularly, under simultaneous contracting, the manufacturer will give up disclosing any supplier’s cost if her cost uncertainty is low. Under sequential contracting, the manufacturer always discloses the cost of the first supplier who he contracts with, although he may not disclose the cost of the other supplier when the supplier’s cost uncertainty is intermediate or low. We also identify individual firms’ preferences between different contracting sequences. Particularly, the manufacturer prefers sequential contracting; the first supplier who the manufacturer contracts with under sequential contracting prefers simultaneous contracting; the other supplier prefers either of the two contracting sequences. Additionally, we show that the information rent under simultaneous contracting is higher than that under sequential contracting, while the system generates nearly the same profit under different contracting sequences.

With the increasingly fierce market competition and the rapid development of advanced logistics technology, service quality guarantee and demand updating become effective ways to promote procurement decisions in logistics supply chain. However, information asymmetry and obedience behavior have made it more complicated. In this paper, we considered the above factors, and studied the capacity procurement issue in a logistics service supply chain consisting of a logistics service integrator (LSI) and a functional logistics service provider (FLSP) in two periods. First, we find the optimal purchase quantities increase with the FLSP’s obedience factor, in specific conditions, the LSI’s guaranteed service quality and FLSP’s obedience behavior can reach the upper limit (or lower limit). Second, the information symmetry creates a win–win situation iff the penalty cost to the FLSP is moderate and the demand is incompletely revealed. Third, demand updating relaxes the condition for the LSI’s service quality guarantee reaching to the upper limit. For FLSP, when the penalty cost is moderate, the demand updating makes FLSP less obedient in case that the demand is completely revealed and more obedient when the demand is incompletely revealed.

Although necessary and often first rate, technocratic solutions alone have been ineffective in delivering real change or lasting results in governance reforms. This is primarily because reform programs are delivered no in controlled environments, but under complex, diverse, sociopolitical and economic conditions. Real-world conditions. In political societies, ownership of reform programs by the entire country cannot be assumed, public opinion will not necessarily be benign, and coalitions of support may be scare or nonexistent, even when intended reforms really will benefit those who need them most.While the development community has the technical tools to address governance challenges, experience shows that technical solutions are often insufficient. Difficulties arise when attempts are made to apply what are often excellent technical solutions. Human beings are not as amenable as are pure numbers, and they cannot be ignored. In the real world, reforms will not succeed, and they will certainly not be sustained, without the correct alignment of citizens, stakeholders, and voice.Governance Reform under Real-World Conditions is a contribution to efforts to improve governance systems around the world, particularly in developing countries. The contributors, who are academics and development practitioners, provide a range of theoretical frameworks and innovative approaches and techniques for dealing with the most important nontechnical or adaptive challenges that impede the success and sustainability of reform efforts.The editors and contributors hope that this book will be a useful guider for governments, think tanks, civil society organizations, and development agencies working to improve the ways in which governance reforms are implemented around the world.

Developing-country governance and its monitoring have risen to the top of the development agenda.This mounting interest is in response to compelling evidence that links governance to development performance-policy quality, public service provision, the investment climate, and the extent of corruption.

This book focuses on the institutional innovations needed to lead the diffusion of the new information and communication technology (ICT) that can help transform developing economies into knowledge economies and information societies. It shows that developing e-leadership institutions is a long-term process, fraught with uncertainties, but a process that remains at the heart of implementing ICT-enabled development strategies. It focuses on improving governance and the delivery of public services, bridging economic divides, promoting social inclusion, and drastically cutting transaction costs across the economy. It seeks to exploit new sources of growth, employment, and competitiveness by promoting the ICT and IT-enabled services industries and the use of ICT by small enterprises to network and compete. This book draws on the experience of Sri Lanka to explore what is involved in moving from vision to implementation of a comprehensive e-development strategy-the e-Sri Lanka program. The focus is on building local e-leadership institutions to drive this process and leveraging ICT to transform government and empower communities through e-government and e-society. Finally, to allow sound selection and management of projects, particularly in a national context, it is critical that the program be free from pressure by government, private companies, or others that may seek to use the program to exercise their influence.