Fiscal adjustment becomes like walking up the down escalator when growth-promoting spending is cut so much as to lower growth and thus the present value of future tax revenues to a degree that more than offsets the improvement in the cash deficit. Although short-term cash flows matter, a...

The topic of managing fiscal risks arising from public-private partnerships is receiving increased attention as more governments turn toward this type of financing for large infrastructure projects. Governments can manage balance sheet exposure to public-private partnerships by quantifying and...

This report is not a step-by-step guide on how to negotiate concessions. Nor is it an attempt to identify model contracts or clauses. Rather, it aims at helping policymakers and their advisers to better understand some of the most important and difficult issues related to the design, award,...

The chapters in this book examine the data on infrastructure and the poor in developing countries and consider how policies centered on private provision can address their needs. Many of the chapters focus on the extent to which the poor have access to infrastructure services of reasonable...

Government guarantees can help persuade private investors to finance valuable new infrastructure. But because their costs are hard to estimate and usually do not show up in the government's accounts, governments can be tempted to grant too many guarantees. Drawing on a diverse range of...

Our consulting experiences indicate that many New Zealand businesses and their managers are increasingly aware of the shortcomings of conventional methods for evaluating capital investment projects particularly in situations where there is considerable flexibility subsequent to the project's...

Long-term commitments to make output-based payments for infrastructure can encourage private investors to provide socially valuable services. Making good decisions about such commitments is difficult however unless the government understands the fiscal costs and risks of possible commitments....

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) can appeal to governments because they offer a new way of providing public services that is possibly more efficient than traditional public finance. But they can also appeal to governments because they allow new investments to be undertaken without any...

This proposed SDN surveys the various accounting stratagems which governments have used to meet fiscal targets—thereby sidestepping the need for true adjustment—and suggests remedial actions to limit this type of fiscal non-transparency. Types of creative accounting covered...