This paper explores the impact of political and institutional variables on public investment. Working with a sample of 80 presidential and parliamentary democracies between 1975 and 2012, we find that the rate of growth of public investment is higher at the beginning of electoral cycles and...

Infrastructure bottlenecks have been identified as a key obstacle to growth affecting productivity and market efficiency, and hindering domestic integration and export performance. This paper assesses the state of Brazil's infrastructure, in light of past investment trends and various quality...

We develop a model to study the macroeconomic effects of public investment surges in low-income countries, making explicit: (i) the investment-growth linkages; (ii) public external and domestic debt accumulation; (iii) the fiscal policy reactions necessary to ensure debt-sustainability; and (iv)...

We analyze the welfare multipliers of public spending (the consumption equivalent change in welfare for one dollar change in public spending) in a DSGE model. The welfare multipliers of public infrastructure investment are positive if infrastructure is sufficiently effective. When the...

This paper explores the macroeconomic effects of improving public infrastructure in the Philippines. After benchmarking the Philippines relative to its neighbors in terms of level of public capital and quality of public infrastructure, and public investment efficiency, it uses model simulations...