"There is widespread concern across Latin America that the provision of infrastructure services has suffered as a consequence of the retrenchment of the public sector and the insufficient response of the private sector to the opening up of infrastructure industries to private participation in...

"Despite the popularity of the term among advocates of debt forgiveness, there is little agreement on a workable definition of "odious" debts and there are but few examples where the concept has been invoked in law to justify non-payment of sovereign debts. Most often, these have been cases when...

"The authors apply stochastic simulation methods to assess debt sustainability in emerging market economies and provide probability measures for projections of the external and public debt burden over the medium term. The vulnerability of public debt to adverse shocks is determined by a number...

"The authors propose a "bottom up" approach to link public investment programs with a class of macro models recently developed to quantify Strategy Papers for Human Development (SPAHD) in low-income countries. The methodology involves establishing constant-price projections of investment outlays...

"The authors explore the relationship between fiscal rules and capital budgeting. The current budgetary approach to limit deficits to a fixed portion of GDP or to balance budgets could undermine incentives to invest in public capital with long-run returns since politicians concerned about...