One of the greatest challenges facing developing countries is gaining access to the capital necessary to achieve widespread electrification, and for this aid is essential. We examine the history of World Bank and other aid agencies' policies in fostering electrification around the world. A...

The ‘Stability and Growth Pact’ aims to constrain excessive fiscal deficits by member countries in the European Monetary Union. It identifies and prescribes sanctions for countries that breach the Maastricht deficit and debt ceilings. Under strong criticism for its apparent favoritism of...

Documenting the long term impact of structural policies on economic performance has generated tremendous interest in the development literature. In contrast, contemporary effects of structural policies are difficult to establish. Structural policies seldom change sufficiently in the short run,...

We measure the overall impact of railroad investment on economic growth in the antebellum period in the United States using a bivariate dynamic time series methodological approach, based on the use of a vector autoregressive (VAR) model. We find bidirectional causality between railroad...

The history of electric utility regulation at both the state and national level from the beginning of the industry through the aftermath of the California energy crisis of 2000--01 is presented. That history was partly determined by the economics of the industry -- on the supply side by its cost...

This work is part of a long-term research project on global electrification. Here we focus on the initial phase of electrification, from the 1880s to 1914, when multinational enterprise and international finance played a crucial role. Electrical equipment manufacturers were first movers in the...

Around the turn of the century, a debate occurred within the infant U.S. electric power industry on the issue of electricity rate structures. We describe those discussions and consider the views of some of the economists who first addressed the issue. Although they were ultimately unsuccessful,...