Spending on productive infrastructure is seen as an important contributor to long term economic growth. Several authors have documented a downward trend in public investment during the last three decades and warned about its possible detrimental effects on the economy. A not well-realized fact...

This study examines the opportunities for growth in the banking sector in the ENCA region and discusses the challenges involved in providing an enabling environment for the development of the private sector. The banking sector has a key role to play as faster growth and economic diversification...

Angesichts eines langfristigen Infrastrukturdefizits in Europa sowie kurzfristig spektakulärer Infrastrukturausfälle (wie des Stromausfalls in Italien am 28. September 2003) stellt sich sowohl auf europäischer als auch auf deutscher Ebene die Frage nach den richtigen wirtschaftspolitischen...

We set out to decompose government investment, seeking especially to estimate how much governments in Europe invest in infrastructure in general and transport infrastructure in particular. It is concluded that infrastructure accounts for about one-third of overall government investment in the EU...

We present some stylised facts about the composition of public investment in Europe and analyse its determinants, with a special focus on the role of fiscal decentralisation. The empirical analysis is conducted both for levels of different types of public investment and for their shares in total...

This paper offers an updated description of the macroeconomic and sectoral significance of PPPs in Europe - without assessing PPPs from a normative perspective. Building on Blanc-Brude et al. (2007), it looks at the evolution of PPPs in the EU, with a particular focus on the recent financial...

This article is the first attempt to compile comprehensive data on infrastructure finance in Europe. We decompose infrastructure finance by institutional sector (i.e. public versus private) into its main components, which consist of traditionalpublic procurement, project finance and finance by...

The paper is the first productivity analysis of a large number of German electricity distributors to date. In it, we address both traditional issues of electricity sector benchmarking, such as the role of scale effects and optimal utility size, as well as new evidence specific to the situation...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of revenue decentralization on the provision of infrastructure at the sub-national level. We estimate the effects of revenue decentralization and earmarked grant financing on the level of sub-national infrastructure investment in 20 European...