The returns from public investment, especially during periods of scaling up, are often lower than expected. To understand the mechanisms behind this regularity we exploit original information on investment projects obtained from World Bank project reports to document the extent and the drivers...

This paper explores whether public investment crowds out or crowds in private investment. To this aim, we build a database of about half a million firms from 49 countries. We find that the effect of public investment on corporate investment depends both on leverage and financial constraints....

What considerations should guide public debt policy going forward? Should debt be reduced to achieve normative anchors (such as 60 percent of GDP), should it be increased further to finance a big public investment push, or should the existing debt be serviced forever? We argue that, for...