A debate has emerged over the optimal delivery of official development assistance (ODA) to developing countries: through grants or through concessional loans. While some countries such as Japan provide aid through loans, other countries tend to rely on grants. An endogenous growth model is...

Recent volatility in international energy prices has revealed South Eastern Europe as one of the most vulnerable regions to such external shocks. Under the current global economic downturn, in addition, the region’s energy-intensive industries are faced with the challenge of the weakening...

Albania is among the most vulnerable countries to external energy shocks and climatic conditions, because of its high dependency on hydropower for electricity. Given highly volatile international energy prices and expected global warming, it is becoming increasingly important to manage the...

Procurement packaging has important effects on not only the bidders' bidding behavior, but also contractors' performance. By changing the size of public contracts, procurers can encourage (or discourage) market competition and improve contract performance, avoiding unnecessary cost overruns and...

The world's climate is changing. It is well recognized that technical standards and project specifications of public infrastructure have to be adjusted, depending on the climate. However, it is less recognized that the public infrastructure procurement also needs to be adjusted. This paper...

Competitive bidding is an important policy tool to procure goods and services from the market at the lowest possible cost. Under traditional public procurement systems, however, it may be difficult to purchase highly customized objects, such as energy efficiency services. This is because not...

Economic development is affected by infrastructure services in both volume and quality terms. However, the quality of infrastructure is relatively difficult to measure and assess. The current paper, using firm-level data collected by a business environment assessment survey in 26 countries in...

In public-private partnership transactions in the water sector, one of the alleged concerns is that there is little market competition at the auction stage. This paper casts light on a tradeoff between the competition effect at the auction level and potential economies of scale in service...

Although it is commonly believed that aggregate economic growth must be associated with public infrastructure stocks, the possible infrastructure needs and effects are different from industry to industry. The agriculture sector is typical. Various infrastructures would affect agriculture growth...