The paper summarizes the framework used in a research project on local public services carried out by Bank of Italy researchers. It discusses motivations, characteristics, results and general lessons of the project, whose sector-specific results are detailed in individual papers. The project was...

This paper analyzes the potential and the limits of project finance for the provision of local public services and compares them with alternative instruments in the light of current regulation. The main requirements for project finance, even in non “pure” forms, to justify its complex...

High-speed Internet, or broadband, access is an essential infrastructure that has been proven to stimulate competition, productivity and growth and it is considered the engine of the so called knowledge-information economy. In this paper, we first provide a technical survey of the standard...