In May 1992, the World Bank hosted a Railway Rountable in Vienna, Austria, attended by transport ministers, advisors, and senior railway staff from the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. The Roundtable reviewed recent trends in the railways'roles in these countries and identified...

The authors argue that traditional explanations of the fiscal crisis in reforming ex-socialist economies overlook crucial connections between key components of the deficit - particularly between reductions in spending and declines in revenues. Almost all studies of the fiscal aspects of the...

The author reviews the conceptual basis for fiscal equalization transfers, analyzes the theoretical implications for optimal design of equalization transfers, and suggests quantitative approaches for assessing the fiscal needs of subnational governments and determining their entitlement to...

Using economic principles, the author provides criteria for financing infrastructure services where consumption-related user charges can be levied effectively. In light of the suggested criteria, the author examines the experience of developing countries in financing publicly provided...

In the past 20 years, high and extremely volatile inflation rates in Latin America have generally been associated with unstable monetary policies and the (temporary) use of inflationary revenues to finance fiscal deficits. There seems to be a consensus that high inflation is bad for economic...

Almost by definition, the basis for development is infrastructure - whether services for human infrastructure (health, education, nutrition) or physical infrastructure (transport, energy, water). Although the infrastructure sectors are diverse, what they have in common is that public policy has...

This paper contains a numerical listing of working papers prepared by the Poilicy, Research Complex. Each citation contains a brief abstract, and the contact point for the paper.

On January 12, 1994, the CFA franc - the currency of the thirteen African states of the CFA Franc Zone - was devalued 50 percent. The event had been expected for some time, but the magnitude and one-shot nature of the devaluation posed problems for members of the zone's two monetary unions. The...

In 1990, Argentina privatized its state-owned telephone company, ENTel. Shifting telecommunications to the private sector was one of the first actions taken under the reform program of the new president, Carlos Saul Menem. In privatizing ENTel, the government focused on privatization as a way of...

Over six decades, Chile experimented with three regulatory regimes and ownership patterns for its telecommunications sectors, each with radically different investment patterns. Until 1970, Chile relied on private ownership and rate-of-return regulation, but excess demand persisted. In the 1970s,...