In 2019, SNC-Lavalin made global headlines after it was revealed that the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, had interfered in the prosecution of the company for the bribery of Libyan officials. Although the scandal was primarily viewed as political, it also highlighted flaws in Canada’s...

This chapter analyzes the link between the digital divide, infrastructure regulation, and disaster planning and relief through a case study of the flood in San Jose, California triggered by the Anderson dam’s overtopping in February 2017 and examination of communications failures during the...

Trade secrecy - the intellectual property doctrine that allows businesses to keep commercially valuable information secret for a potentially unlimited amount of time - is increasingly intruding in the operation of our public infrastructure, like voting machines, the Internet and...

Using a two-country two-good model, we examine the welfare effects of foreign aid that facilitates factor movement between industries in the recipient country. The government of the donor country produces a public input, which the recipient's government is forced to purchase by spending aid as...

The role of fiscal policy is examined when public goods provide both productive and utility services. In the presence of congestion, the consumption tax is shown to be distortionary. Optimal fiscal policy involves using consumption-based instruments in conjunction with the income tax. An income...

In this paper, we argue that in a supply deficient situation, a vaccination strategy that makes use of an analysis of the different stages of the Covid waves and the pattern of their geographical spread can prove to be far more effective than the current non-transparent mechanism of interstate...

We provide a comprehensive survey of the recent literature on the link between productive government expenditure and economic growth. Starting with the seminal paper of Robert Barro (1990) we show that an understanding of the core results of the ensuing contributions can be gained from the study...

A recent Asian Development Bank publication estimates the large infrastructure financing requirement in Asia for the period 2016-2030, which establishes the strong need to encourage private sector participation to meet investment requirements. This paper analyzes a critical aspect of expanding...

Ethnic favoritism is seen as antithetical to development. This paper provides credible quantification of the extent of ethnic favoritism using data on road building in Kenyan districts across the 1963-2011 period. Guided by a model it then examines whether the transition in and out of democracy...

Many infrastructural projects have cost overruns and there has been a lot of research both on why these cost overruns occur and what can be done to reduce cost overruns. Bent Flyvbjerg is the leading researcher in the area and in this article his proposals are also the starting point. Beside a...