If the South Asia region hopes to meet its development goals and not risk slowing down or even halting growth, poverty alleviation, and shared prosperity, it is essential to make closing its huge infrastructure gap a priority. Identifying and addressing gaps in the data on expenditure, access,...

The goal of the paper is to provide a comprehensive assessment of the impact of infrastructure development on growth in African countries. Based on econometric estimates for a sample of 136 countries from 1960-2005, the authors evaluate the impact on per capita growth of faster accumulation of...

This paper provides an overview of the major current debates on infrastructure policy. It reviews the evidence on the macroeconomic significance of the sector in terms of growth and poverty alleviation. It also discusses the major institutional debates, including the relative comparative...

This paper presents a survey of recent research on the economics of infrastructure in developing countries. Energy, transport, telecommunications, water and sanitation are considered. The survey covers two main set of issues: the linkages between infrastructure and economic growth (at the...

This paper examines whether infrastructure investment has contributed to East Asia's economic growth using both a growth accounting framework and cross-country regressions. For most of the variables used, both the growth accounting exercise and cross-country regressions fail to find a...

Through an empirical analysis of the relationship between private participation in infrastructure and country risk, the paper shows that country risk ratings are a reliable predictor of infrastructure investment levels in developing countries. The results suggest that a difference of one...

In the past half a century, Egypt has experienced remarkable progress in the provision of infrastructure in all areas, including transportation, telecommunication, power generation, and water and sanitation. Judging from an international perspective, Egypt has achieved an infrastructure status...

In many countries, place specific investments in infrastructure are viewed as integral components of territorial development policies. But are these policies fighting market forces of concentration? Or are they adding net value to the national economy by tapping underexploited resources? This...

This survey reviews the existing macro-level empirical literature on the link between infrastructure and development outcomes in a critical light. After providing a general framework that casts the relevant terms of the controversy on the real effect of infrastructure on growth in the context of...

The author examines the role of private participation in infrastructure (PPI) in mobilizing finance for key urban services, that is, urban roads, municipal solid waste management, and water and sanitation since the early 1990s when private participation came to be seen as a key element in...