This paper performs a literature update of quantitative studies of water and sanitation services (WSS), with an emphasis on tracking the benchmarking literature. There are 190 studies which use cost or production functions to evaluate the performance of WSS utilities. The studies examine: (1) the scale, scope or density economies of utilities in a particular country or region; (2) the influence of ownership on efficiency; (3) the existence and power of incentives associated with different governance systems (including external regulation); and (4) performance assessment (benchmarking). In addition, this paper presents patterns regarding quantitative methods adopted over time, as well as some major trends in results.

This article examines how risk is reflected in infrastructure regulatory contracts, using examples from water utilities to illustrate key points. Partnerships between public and private sectors in intensive capital network services require risks to be assigned to the contractual party that is better able to mitigate them or to bear them. After identifying risks that must be addressed in infrastructure contracts, their classification, allocation, and impact are presented along with the measures to minimize risks. Two contracts in the water sector in Portugal are analyzed. One arrangement corresponds to a public–private partnership (PPP) of the purely contractual type (concession arrangement) and the other to an institutionalized PPP (mixed company). We conclude that risk is a key issue in contracts with the private sector; an appropriate allocation of risks is a necessary condition for successful contracts.

Despite the importance of government transparency to promote accountability and prevent maladministration, empirical research has failed to produce proper tools to assess and compare government transparency practices. Most contributions to the topic do not address it from a stakeholder’s perspective, particularly in selecting the indicators to include in transparency indexes. This paper contributes to the debate by developing a municipal transparency index based on information available on local government official websites. The methodological approach borrows insights from the decision analysis literature to structure the index through a participatory process. An application to the Portuguese local government setting is briefly discussed.