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...

Intro -- CONTENTS -- Foreword -- Abstract -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Summary -- 2 Introduction -- 3 Clarifying the Objectives of Fiscal Support -- 4 Considering Policy Options Other Than Fiscal Support -- 5 Identifying the Instruments of Fiscal Support -- 6 Comparing the Cost of Different...

The book considers when governments should give guarantees to private investors. After describing the history of guarantees, and the challenges the politics and psychology create for good decisions, the book sets out principles for allocating risk (and therefore guarantees), techniques for...

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...

When governments seek private investment in infrastructure projects, they usually find themselves asked to provide grants, guarantees, or other forms of fiscal support. Often they prefer to provide support in ways that limit immediate cash expenditure but sometimes generate large costs later....

The authors propose a number of privatization rules to ensure that management will improve after privatization. Governments should ensure that the privatized sector has several firms operating in industries that are local natural monopolies, so that if one operator goes bankrupt, another can...