Cities exist, grow, and prosper because they take advantage of scale economies and specialization wrought by agglomeration. But output growth inevitably stresses transport infrastructure because production requires space and mobility. To prevent congestion from crowding out agglomeration...

This paper develops simple guidelines for fiscal policy in oil producing countries, focusing on three issues: intergenerational oil distribution, precautionary saving, and adjustment costs. The paper presents a framework to analyze how the revenue generated by an exhaustible source of wealth...

This paper reviews the Latin American experience with highway privatization during the last decade. Based on evidence from Argentina, Colombia and Chile, we find that private financing of new highways freed up fewer public resources than expected because public funds were often diverted to bail...

In this paper we show that fixed-term contracts, which are commonly used to franchise highways, do not allocate demand risk optimally. We characterize the optimal risk-sharing contract and show that it can be implemented with a fairly straightforward mechanisma least-present-value-of-revenue...

A seaport is awarded in a Demsetz auction to the operator bidding the lowest cargo-handling fee. The competitive auction is irrelevant if the port operator integrates into shipping and sabotages competitors, thus providing a motive for a ban on vertical integration. The paper shows that such a...