This paper documents the prevalence of in-house generation of electric power by firms in Sub-Saharan Africa and attempts to identify the underlying causes. The analysis is based on two data sources. The UDI World Electric Power Plants Data Base (WEPP), a global inventory of electric power...

The paper's objective is to explain factors underlying Africa's weak infrastructure endowment and to identify suitable infrastructure goals for the region based on benchmarking against international peers. The authors use a dataset covering the stocks of key infrastructure-including information...

Treating data collected pre- and post-COVID-19 as a quasi-experiment, this paper examines the importance of presumed enablers and safeguards in driving the observed expansion of digital payments and digital financial inclusion. The analysis interacts drivers of digital payment usage with a...

This paper presents a meta-analysis of the infrastructure research done over more than three decades, using a database of over a thousand estimates from 221 papers reporting outcome elasticities. The analysis casts a wide net to include the transport, energy, and digital or information and...

This Live Wire-based on Off the Books: Understanding and Mitigating the Fiscal Risks of Infrastructure (2023)-presents a systematic assessment of the magnitude and prevalence of fiscal risks from power investments and their root causes across a range of low- and middle-income countries. Drawing...

Policy makers have long used investing in public infrastructure as a means of reducing geographical disparities and promoting growth. The goal of this paper is to provide insights to development practitioners on designing interventions to maximize the development impact of infrastructure. For...

"The Economics of Electric Vehicles for Passenger Transportation" provides answers to three critical questions: Why should developing countries pursue e-mobility? When does an accelerated transition to electric vehicles (EVs) make sense for developing countries? How can governments make this...