Evidence of public expenditure on infrastructure is extremely sparse. Little is known about the trends and patterns of infrastructure expenditure, and there is no real basis for assessing the adequacy and efficiency of infrastructure spending. Drawing on the World Bank's novel BOOST database,...

The evolution of transport public-private partnerships (PPPs) in developing and developed countries since the early 1990s seems to be following a similar path: private initiatives work for a while but after a shock to the sector takes place the public sector returns as regulator, owner or...

Through an empirical analysis of the relationship between private participation in infrastructure and country risk, the paper shows that country risk ratings are a reliable predictor of infrastructure investment levels in developing countries. The results suggest that a difference of one...

Building upon the literature on contact theory, this paper explores the role of inter-group interaction in shaping social cohesion between refugees and host communities in East Africa. It draws upon first-hand quantitative (n=16,608) and qualitative data collected from refugees and nearby host...

This paper discusses mechanisms of grand corruption in private sector utility provision in developing countries. By the term "grand corruption," the authors abstract from the petty corruption that consumers experience - for example, when firms and individuals pay bribes to get water delivery or...

In public-private partnership transactions in the water sector, one of the alleged concerns is that there is little market competition at the auction stage. This paper casts light on a tradeoff between the competition effect at the auction level and potential economies of scale in service...

This paper seeks to shed some light on the extent to which infrastructure sub-sectors - energy, telecommunications, water supply, sanitation, and transport - contributed to growth in East Asia during 1985-2004. It also attempts to provide additional insights on whether the relationship between...

Multidimensional auctions are a natural and practical solution when auctioneers pursue more than one objective in their public-private-partnership transactions. However, it is difficult to achieve auction efficiency with multiple award criteria. Using auction data from road and railway...

Governance is central to development outcomes in infrastructure, not least because corruption (a symptom of failed governance) can have significantly negative impact on returns to infrastructure investment. This conclusion holds whether infrastructure is in private or public hands. This paper...

This paper uses a new dataset, "WATSAN," of private sector participation (PSP) projects for water and sanitation in developing countries to examine the determinants of the number of projects signed for each country between 1990 and 2004. The new dataset improves on existing sources, in...