Infrastructure and Growth in Developing Countries: Recent Advances and Research Challenges

Abstract

This paper presents a survey of recent research on the economics of infrastructure in developing countries. Energy, transport, telecommunications, water and sanitation are considered. The survey covers two main set of issues: the linkages between infrastructure and economic growth (at the economy-wide, regional and sectoral level) and the composition, sequencing and efficiency of alternative infrastructure investments, including the arbitrage between new investments and maintenance expenditures; OPEX and CAPEX, and public versus private investment. Following the introduction, section 2 discusses the theoretical foundations (growth theory and new economic geography). Section 3 assesses the analysis of 140 specifications from 64 recent empirical papers examining type of data used, level of aggregation, econometric techniques and nature of the sample and discusses both the macro-econometric and microeconometric contributions of these papers. Finally section 4 discusses directions for future research and suggests priorities in data development.