When privatization transforms a public infrastructure monopoly into a private one by means of a long-term concession agreement, how should concession contracts be designed and awarded?In the past decade it has become popular to privatize infrastructure ventures in such sectors as energy,...

Fundamentally, poverty reduction is about bringing growth processes to poor areas. Because poor areas can benefit from technical and organizational innovations made elsewhere in the world, it is possible today to create productive jobs faster and in greater quantity than ever before. The puzzle...

The relative wealth hypothesis of Froot and Stein (1991), motivated by the aggregate correlation between real exchange rates and foreign direct investment (FDI) observed in the 1980s, cannot explain one of the major shifts in FDI in the 1990s: the continued decline in Japanese FDI during a...

We study the determinants of the dollar/pound real exchange rate from 1879 to 1914 focusing on the role of fiscal policy. We present a simple dynamic model of the real exchange rate to frame our analysis. The econometric results are based upon the decomposition of the sources of the innovation...

The paper is based on a scenario workshop held on January 20, 2009, where leading financial and private sector development experts from IFC, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank discussed the unfolding crisis. This paper is a product of the staff of the Financial and Private...

This paper describes the de facto economic integration taking place between China, Hong Kong and Taiwan -- the "Chinese Economic Area" -- and analyses basic factors underlying the process. Even in the face of weak economic performance in OECD countries the integration has helped underpin rapid...