India's fast-growing cities face three key challenges in improving public health outcomes. The first is the persistence of weak links in the chain -- notably, slums badly underserved with basic civic services -- that can pose public health threats to all. Richer residents corner public...

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 particular...

The paper addresses the issue of the feasible level of private finance in a contracting model of infrastructure finding and financing. It characterizes the structure of financial contracts, deriving the conditions under which both public and private finance coexist. A key feature is that access...

This paper argues for a novel approach to financing infrastructure needs in Arab countries. It first describes the context of rising public debt in the region, contrasting it with the vast infrastructure needs. It then discusses the challenges in meeting these needs with traditional financing....

The topic of managing fiscal risks arising from public-private partnerships is receiving increased attention as more governments turn toward this type of financing for large infrastructure projects. Governments can manage balance sheet exposure to public-private partnerships by quantifying and...

Sovereign wealth funds represent a large and growing pool of savings. An increasing number of these funds are owned by natural resource?exporting countries and have a variety of objectives, including intergenerational equity and macroeconomic stabilization. Traditionally, these funds have...