Europe faces major investment in infrastructure in the coming decade in the context of the credit crisis and the broader economic crisis that followed.The article considers what the core market failures in infrastructure are, focussing on the gap between marginal and average costs, the system...

This paper discusses the different functions that capital markets and banks have in economic development, and it reviews the debate about marketbased vs. bank-based financial systems. Using data for a sample of 40 countries over the period 1975-98, the paper then shows that variation in both...