To date most private sector water projects have been financed on a limited recourse basis, that is, with project cash flows and assets as the main security for lenders. The move from project to corporate (balance sheet) financing is occurring in stages. Financing project debt from the sponsor...

A project finance structure allows water projects with attractive cash flows and risk profiles to secure long-term private capital. But even in industrial countries the credit strength of off-taking municipal governments and the sector's traditional monopoly structure expose lenders to...

Government guarantees for private infrastructure projects represent real liabilities, and their costs can average as much as a third of the amount guaranteed. The authors show how governments can use a risk valuation process to analyze the distribution of risks, decide which risks they should...

To manage their exposure arising from guarantees to infrastructure projects, governments need to adopt modern risk management techniques. The authors introduce an integrated risk management system that draws on recent advances in the private sector. Adapted for use in the public sector, the...

Increasingly, the consequences of globalization call for the involvement, not only of national governments, but of the international development community as a whole. Such involvement needs to occur within a comprehensive framework that encompasses stakeholders from government, non-governmental...

Increasing foreign participation and high concentration levels characterize the recent evolution of banking sectors' market structures in developing countries. The authors analyze the impact of these factors on Latin American bank spreads during the late 1990s. Their results suggest that foreign...

These are the proceedings from a World Bank workshop on global public policies, and programs, assembled from transcripts, and accompanying papers. The combination of market failure, and limited institutional capacity to influence economic, and social change across national borders, underlies...

The institutions of bankruptcy have been at the center of the great economic events of the last decade, ranging from the Asian economic crisis, to the transition from socialism to capitalism. Our understanding of the economic, and legal structure of these institutions, as well as of their impact...

This article analyzes the relationship between export competitiveness and investment in machinery, allowing for imperfect substitution between domestically produced and imported machinery. A trans log export price function is estimated for developed, export oriented developing, and import...

In this volume, world-renowned contributors, including Martin Ravallion, Michael Kremer and Robert Townsend, deal with the institutional characteristics of poverty resulting from the time pattern of aid, the nature of financial systems and the political economy of budgetary decisions. Going...