The link between economic growth, and better provision of infrastructure services may be unproven, but it is clear that reforms to make infrastructure services more competitive (where possible), and to provide strong, and independent economic regulation of natural monopolies, do create an...

The most striking fact about the economic geography of the world is the uneven spatial distribution of economic activity, including the coexistence of economic development and underdevelopment. High-income regions are almost entirely concentrated in a few temperate zones, half of the world's GDP...

A successful poverty alleviation strategy has four distinct elements: 1) identifying who the poor are, where they are located, and what they do; 2) analyzing why they are poor; 3) developing policies to improve their standards of living; and 4) supplementing income-improving policies with...

The author reviews the state of thinking on the governance role of state ownership. He argues that a gradual transfer of operational control and financial claims over state assets remains the most desirable goal, but it needs to be paced to avoid regulatory capture, and the capture of the...

In a globalizing world, cities at or near the apex of the international urban hierarchy are among the favored few--New York, London, and Tokyo--that have acquired large economic, cultural, and symbolic roles. Among a handful of regions that aspire to such a role--such as Hong Kong, Miami, and...

Governments should increasingly be able to rely on the private sector for help supporting (and financing) the transport sector - especially infrastructure support services for which there is heavy demand - but first they must improve their regulatory tools and sort out the institutional mess...

An understanding of corporate governance theory can promote the adoption of appropriate governance tools to limit agency problems in public pension fund management. The absence of a market for corporate control hinders the translation of lessons from the private sector corporate world to public...

Minimizing costs is often cited as essential for optimizing service delivery. Roads are the oldest, most important infrastructure services provided by governments. They require construction, rehabilitation, maintenance, and administration. Various institutional arrangements affect the degree to...

The authors contribute to both the finance-growth literature and the community banking literature by testing the effects of the relative health of community banks on economic growth, and investigating potential transmission mechanisms for these effects using data from 1993-2000 on 49 nations....

The authors try to replace myths about government pay and employment with reliable facts from a survey for about 100 countries in the early 1900s. The study also outlines the general nature of civil service problems in the different regions. Nevertheless, while the facts are useful...