The recent experience of infrastructure investment in the People's Republic of China (PRC) suggests an intertwined relationship between investment, urbanization, and economic growth. In one mechanism, urbanization generates demand for infrastructure investment, which then drives economic growth...

In this paper we estimate the impact of local authority infrastructure spending in New Zealand using spatial econometric modelling, with the infrastructure spending itself endogenously determined. Utilizing data from the New Zealand Census and Local Authorities Finance data (1991-2008),...

We analyse the impacts that infrastructure provision has on long run urban development. The topic is of major importance to policy-makers when deciding whether or not to invest in major infrastructure projects. The analysis helps policy-makers to understand the intended, and potentially...

We explore the effects of decentralization on education and health in Ethiopia using an original database covering all of the country’s regions and woredas (local governments). Ethiopia is a remarkable case in which war, famine and chaos in the 1970s-80s were followed by federalization,...

We setup a model in which the residents of two neighboring municipalities can use the services provided by public infrastructures located in both jurisdictions. If services are either complements or substitutes in use, the municipalities strategically interact when investing in infrastructures;...

Following the political economics literature documenting how public resources are likely to be geographically distributed along equity and efficiency as well as political considerations, this article is aimed at exploring to what extent, and through which channels, politics play a role in...

In this paper we develop a framework to value public investments with the purpose of increasing bicycling that explicitly accounts internal costs of bicycling, which are typically neglected in current established approaches that value bicycle spending by means of gross health benefits alone, as...

This article presents new monthly estimates of the gross fixed capital formation of the Brazilian general government for the 2002-2010 years. A significant research effort was made to carry out the estimations. First, the many differences between the concepts of public investment (as used in the...

Die Infrastrukturinvestitionen nehmen seit Jahren ab. Insbesondere die Gemeinden haben drastisch weniger investiert, nicht wegen eines geringeren Bedarfs, sondern wegen erheblicher Finanzprobleme in der Vergangenheit. Über den langen Zeitraum sind auch Planungs- und Genehmigungskapazitäten...

Climate action requires significant public- and private sector investment to achieve meaningful reductions in carbon emissions. This paper documents that large-scale austerity, coupled with barriers to flows of data and a lack of (digital) skills in (local) government, may have been a...