The report estimates Middle East and North Africa's (MENA's) infrastructure investment and maintenance needs through 2020 at 106 billion dollars per year or 6.9 percent of the annual regional gross domestic product (GDP). Developing oil exporting countries (OEC) will need to commit almost 11...

Naturally monopolistic network industries are subject to regulation of access to market and charging in order to achieve optimal use of infrastructure and avoid the abuse of monopoly power. Relatively little is known what results does such regulation generate and whether it achieves objectives....

Considerable work has been done to understand and improve the resilience of individual infrastructure components. However, systems of components, or even systems of systems, are far less well understood. Cascade effects, where the loss of one infrastructure affects others, is a major source of...

The state of national labor markets has always been a concern for governments and development agencies such as the World Bank. Key labor market indicators, such as the rate of unemployment, send signals about the health of an economy and mirror citizens' attitudes. Being gainfully employed is an...

In this paper we study the effect of the terms of access to an incumbent's infrastructure on an entrant's incentives to build its own infrastructure. Setting a high level of access (e.g., a resale arrangement), which requires relatively small up-front investment for entry, accelerates market...

This paper finds that coherent regulatory policies can boost investment in network industries of OECD economies. Rate-of-return regulation is generally thought to result in over investment, while incentive regulation is believed to entail underinvestment. Yet, previous empirical work has...

This paper finds that coherent regulatory policies can boost investment in network industries of OECD economies. Rate-of-return regulation is generally thought to result in overinvestment, while incentive regulation is believed to entail underinvestment. Yet, previous empirical work has...

Investment in network infrastructure can boost long-term economic growth in OECD countries. Moreover, infrastructure investment can have a positive effect on growth that goes beyond the effect of the capital stock because of economies of scale, the existence of network externalities competition...