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Policy makers are often confronted with a myriad of factors in the investment decision-making process. This issue is particularly acute in infrastructure decisions since these often involve large sums and lock-in technologies. In regions and countries where the infrastructure access gap is large and public budgets severely constrained, the importance of considering the different facets of the decision-making process becomes even more relevant. This is the case for South Asia. This article presents the infrastructure access gap in South Asia and discusses the impacts that this gap has in South Asian economies. It examines the links between the infrastructure and economic growth and infrastructure and welfare/poverty. The article reviews different methodologies to measure these impacts and hence serve as mechanisms to establish priorities. Finally, the article presents a methodology to holistically equate trade-offs among different policy objectives per key infrastructure sectors.

Infrastructure Investment in Indonesia: A Focus on Ports presents an important and original collation of current material investigating the efficient facilitation of major infrastructure projects in Indonesia and Australia, with an emphasis on infrastructure investment and a focus on port planning and development. This interdisciplinary collection - spanning the disciplines of engineering, law and planning - draws helpfully on a range of practical and theoretical perspectives. It is the collaborative effort of leading experts in the fields of infrastructure project initiation and financing, and is based on international research conducted by the University of Melbourne, Universitas Indonesia and Universitas Gadjah Mada. The volume opens with a macroscopic perspective, outlining the broader economic situations confronting Indonesia and Australia, before adopting a more microscopic perspective to closely examine the issues surrounding major infrastructure investment in both countries. Detailed case studies are provided, key challenges are identified, and evidence-based solutions are offered. These solutions respond to such topical issues as how to overcome delays in infrastructure project initiation; how to enhance project decision-making for the selection and evaluation of projects; how to improve overall efficiency in the arrangement of project finance and governance; and how to increase the return provided by investment in infrastructure. Special focus is given to proposed improvements to the portal cities of Indonesia in the areas of major infrastructure project governance, policies, engagement, operation and processes. By rigorously investigating the economic, transport, finance and policy aspects of infrastructure investment, this book will be a valuable resource for policy makers and government officials in Indonesia and Australia, infrastructure investment organisations, and companies involved in exporting services between Indonesia and Australia. This book will also be of interest to researchers and students of infrastructure planning and financing, setting a solid foundation for subsequent investigations of financing options for large-scale infrastructure developments.

Infrastructure. It's one of the hottest topics in politics today. But what does the research say about the effects and politics of infrastructure investment?

Political scientist, Jon Rogowski, from the University of Chicago has a surprising paper that shows the long-term economic outcomes of post office developments in the United States. But it also gives us a lot to think about when it comes to who benefits, misses out, or even loses when infrastructure gets political.

Higher insurance penetration and smaller infrastructure investment gaps has been correlated even after accounting for gross domestic product (GDP) levels, which indicates the insurance industry may have made some contributions to this development. Insurers have been promoting infrastructure investments as both asset owners and asset managers because this asset class makes sense from an asset liability management (ALM) viewpoint and they can leverage their asset management function. The stable and long-term cash flows of infrastructure assets naturally align with liabilities of insurers, particularly life insurers. Creating an ecosystem around infrastructure finance and different types of market players is of high importance. In a developing country where banks are already dominant in infrastructure financing and a risk-based framework for the banking sector constrains them from providing long-tenor financing, the roll-over model can work. Finally, governments and national supervisors can support infrastructure investments in several ways, including establishing a clear definition for infrastructure and compiling data, lowering capital charges on infrastructure investments (if their different treatment is evidence-based), facilitating credit enhancement mechanism and the increase of investible infrastructure projects, etc. In some cases, more clarity may be required on capital charges between infrastructure and securitized assets. Restrictions on direct investments to infrastructure can also be lifted under appropriate risk-based supervision in place unless being harmful to the interests of policyholders.

Wahba Institute for Strategic Competition (WISC) Director Hon. Mark Kennedy, Wilson Center CEO Amb. Mark A. Green, and DFC Deputy CEO Hon. Nisha Biswal kick off WISC's 'Mobilizing Private Investment in International Infrastructure' event with their opening remarks and keynote address.

AbstractThis paper studies how transport infrastructure investments (TIIs) affect a bidding war for a firm between two asymmetric countries within a region in a context of imperfect competition, where TIIs play the role of a global public good, leading to a reduction in the unit trade cost between the two countries. A number of interesting results are derived from the model. In particular, TIIs can intensify fiscal competition between the two countries. Surprisingly, this conventional wisdom seems to be confirmed by this paper for the first time. Welfare implications of the model are also examined.

This study provides a first analysis of the recent development in infrastructure investment in the Western Balkans. It identifies infrastructure gaps as well as key infrastructure initiatives in the region, outlines the political dimension and provides the respective detailed infrastructure investment data as collected from the Western Balkans statistical offices. The Western Balkans are a good case study also for other regions in the EU neighbourhood that have similar developmental problems. It teaches that (i) intensity of involvement is important; (ii) the composition of the funds matters; (iii) infrastructure funding will not automatically lead to more political cooperation; (iv) infrastructure development funds can also be used as a sort of reward for more political cooperation. These principles could be applied in the EU's neighbourhood policy for the Eastern Partnership countries as well as the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership countries, according to the local requirements.

AbstractUrban developments in expanding economies require increasing investments in infrastructure and services. If these are not provided by developers and landowners, the cost has to be met by the government and taxpayers. Financial benefits of economic development accrue to developers and landowners in the form of increased land values, but previous attempts to redirect a share of these benefits to the government have rarely been successful. A more logical and practical alternative would be the introduction of a system that returns dividends to the government in proportion to its investments in infrastructure and services.

This paper explores empirically the relationship between infrastructure and economic growth by including the data of expenditure in infrastructure as a share of GDP in traditional growth cross‐country regressions. Since results are inconclusive, the paper elaborates some new indicators of investment in infrastructure employing physical units of infrastructure. They are positively and significantly correlated with growth in two different samples of countries.

Preface -- The institutional and regulatory environment for public-private partnerships in infrastructure in emerging markets and developing economies / Fernanda Ruiz-Nuñez and Zichao Wei, The World Bank -- Governance institutions and the investment costs of non-conventional renewable energy generation in developing countries / Daiana Dalla Vecchia and Gisele Ferreira Tiryaki, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil -- Electric power generation in Brazil : evaluating the regulation model's basic assumption / Maurício Marins Machado and Maria da Conceição S. de Sousa, Ministério do Planejamento, Desenvolvimento e Gestão, Brazil, and others -- Tapping the bounty : challenges to restore the investments in the Brazilian oil industry / Edmar de Almeida, Luciano Losekann and Breno Medeiros, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and others -- Natural resources and economic growth : an analysis of the municipalities located at the State of Bahia, Brazil / Luiz Gustavo Araújo da Cruz Casais e Silva, André Luís Mota dos Santos and Rodrigo Carvalho Oliveira, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil -- Demand for public transportation and the design of optimal public policies / Leticia Klotz, André Trindade and Edmilson Varejão, University of Minnesota, Minnesota, USA, and others -- Using optimisation and machine learning to validate the value of infrastructure investments / Rodolfo García-Flores, Soumya Banerjee and George Mathews, CSIRO Data61, Clayton South, VIC, Australia, and others -- Funding and financing for wastewater and sanitation infrastructure in South Africa : pricing, tariffs and operational efficiency / Cornelius Ruiters and Maselaganye P. Matji, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Pretoria, South Africa -- Index